Nov. 15, 2012
UCF Athletics Social Media Directory
By Andrew Jennette
UCFAthletics.com
ORLANDO, Fla. (UCFAthletics.com) - With a pair of victories last weekend over UAB and Memphis, the UCF volleyball team claimed its best league finish since joining Conference USA. The Knights finished with an 11-5 league record (14-14 overall) to earn the No. 3 seed in the in the Conference USA Championship.
UCF is in Tulsa, Okla., for the quarterfinals of the tournament that begins on Friday. The Black and Gold will face No. 6 seed Marshall (18-12, 8-8 C-USA) at 8 p.m. ET in the Donald W. Reynolds Center.
The winner of Friday's match will move on to play the winner of the Rice/Houston match on Saturday at 6 p.m. ET.
I anticipate another UCF-Marshall epic battle. They always are and they have been the entire five years that I've been here, UCF head coach Todd Dagenais said. Sets are decided by two points and a lot of times they get heated and contested and sometimes there is even yapping going on under the net, but that's fun. That's college sports at its best. We embrace those kinds of challenges.
We know Marshall is extremely well coached. Coach (Mitch) Jacobs is one of the best tacticians in the league and he's going to find ways to matchup their strengths to our weaknesses and we're going to do the same thing, Dagenais continued. We welcome that challenge and we expect they do too. It's going to be a lot of fun for the fans in Tulsa.
All matches will be available through live stream video as well as live stats, via 2012 Women's Volleyball Championship Central.
The Knights split two matches against Marshall earlier this season, dropping a wild back-and-forth battle in Huntington on Sept. 28, 3-2, before bouncing back and earning a 3-1 victory at the Venue on Oct. 28.
In the first match, redshirt junior Angelica Crump tied her career-high with 24 kills and setters Marie Reiterova and Dana Faught both recorded assist-dig double doubles. Senior Meredith Murphy was strong on the back row digging out 23 shots.
The second match featured the best team offensive performance of the season by the Knights as they hit .379 and blasted 57 kills in just four sets. Sophomore Ashley Gialenios had a career-high 16 kills and hit .536 for the match. Gialenios was backed by senior Evija Vilde who smacked a team-high 17 kills.