Volleyball defeats La. Tech on road in four sets
Clay Massey | Staff Writer
Led by the attack of Amanda Chamberlain, Carnae Dillard and Amy Henard, the University of North Texas took down Louisiana Tech in four sets in Louisiana. North Texas controlled early, but the third and fourth sets would be wake-up calls to the Mean Green.
“Any win on the road is a great win,” said head coach Andrew Palileo. “We came out really strong and controlled the match the first two sets, we let them back in with the third set. That fourth set was back and forth. The fifth set is such a crapshoot. We definitely didn’t want to go to a fifth set, I’ll tell you that much.”
North Texas held close in set one thanks to the play of Chamberlain and Dillard. Dillard evened the score at nine with a kill on the assist from Henard. Dillard finished with nine kills in set one. North Texas would then pull away to win the set by the score of 25-17.
Dillard carried the strong play into set two. North Texas would never not lead in set two and eased their way to 25-20 win in the set. Freshman Hannah Shaw stepped up to grab some points for her team in set two. She would finish with 11 kills on the night.
“I think Amy was putting the ball where it needed to be tonight,” said Dillard. “I was just working around it. I think it was just confidence and the ball was where it needed be.”
The third set was all Louisiana Tech as they jumped out front and never looked back. Finishing the set with a 25-17 win led by Angela Papach, who would finish with 14 kills, Louisiana looked comfortable from the get go.
The final set was a wild battle coming down to the final moments. North Texas came from behind after trailing by five at one point. North Texas strung together their points together while preventing Tech from scoring. Henard set up Dillard for the final kill as the team busted out into celebration. Henard finished with 43 assists, par for the course by her standards.
“Things were going well, it was rolling,” said Henard. “We knew they were going to clamp our middles a lot so we started to spread it to the outside. They made adjustments from there and clamped it on to the left side. The whole entire game we had to do something different. Our hitters were on all cylinders of the game.”
The team returns to action on Sunday as they face another C-USA foe in Marshall University. The match starts at noon.
Featured Image: File Photo
There are no comments at the moment, do you want to add one?
Write a comment