Courtesy of Louisiana Tech Athletic Communications
The Louisiana Tech volleyball team will close out the regular season against Jacksonville State today and Friday in the Thomas Assembly Center with a chance to qualify for the Conference USA Tournament on the line.
Tonight’s match starts at 6 p.m. while Friday’s match will start at 3 p.m. The Bulldogs will honor their lone senior, Ashley Taylor, before the match tonight.
Louisiana Tech (6-20, 1-13) comes into the final matches of Conference USA play needing just one win to qualify for the conference tournament. Two wins will give the Bulldogs the tiebreaker over Jacksonville State and move them into seventh place.
“We have had a solid week of practice leading up to two very important matches,” said head coach Amber McCray. “I hope that as many people as possible will come out to support our team as we are playing for something much bigger than ourselves this week. We still have a chance to do something that hasn’t been done before (qualifying for the CUSA Tournament) and something that has been a huge goal for our program every year. We can’t change the past. All we have is now, and I can’t wait to see what we do with this opportunity.”
Jacksonville State (5-19, 3-11) has lost five straight matches coming into the series.
The Gamecocks have five players with over 100 kills on the season. Kaylee Mosely and Maddie Stayer have 168 and 162, respectively. Ellie Garrett leads the way with 609 assists.
Defensively, Liberty has four players with over 100 digs on the season. Brooklyn Schiffi leads the way with 215 digs, and Gracie Danziger has 189. Morgan McClure has a team-high 63 blocks.
The Bulldogs and Gamecocks had met just once before, on Sept. 12, 2008, in which Jacksonville State won 3-0.
