ORLANDO – The UCF volleyball team is off to a 3-0 start to begin the 2020-21 campaign following another 3-0 sweep over UNF on Sunday at The Venue in Orlando, Fla.
"UNF played with a lot of heart tonight," said UCF head coach Todd Dagenais. "I thought we spread the ball around a lot more tonight. It was a nice offensive output with very little errors. Defensively, the numbers say we did okay, but I thought maybe we were a step slow, but we are going to look at this and learn from it… We got tested, but I thought we passed the test."
In similar fashion to Saturday's contest, the Knights came out of the gates slow in the first set against UNF, at one point falling behind 17-12 before coach Dagenais called the first timeout of the match. Following the timeout, the Knights outscored UNF, 4-2 before the Ospreys were forced to call a timeout of their own. When play resumed, the Knights went on a five-point run to go up, 21-19 and UNF would call time once more, but it would not help as UCF went on to win the first set, 25-22.
The Knights kept that momentum rolling into set two, going up 4-0 before the Ospreys called time. UNF managed to battle back to make it a close set, at one point bringing their deficit to just 20-18, but the Knights persevered to win the set, 25-19.
In the final set, the two teams battled early and were knotted up at six apiece, but the Knights once again pulled out in front as the set went on, going on to win by a convincing, 25-16 margin.
McKenna Melville was the only Knight to record a double-digit kill total in the match, checking in with 11 while hitting at a .375 clip. Newcomer Tali Marmen was second on the team with nine kills.
Junior Amber Olson also had a nice night, checking in with 11 assists and eight digs, the highest for any UCF player in the match.
UCF will enjoy a break from game action during the week before welcoming Tulane to The Venue for two non-conference matches on Friday, February 5 and Saturday, February 6. Both matches will be at 2:00 p.m.
DAGENAIS DIALOUGE:
[On coming back in the first set]
"The message at the timeout was simple: 'we're not going to get this all back at once.' We just had to go back and earn points with our serve, and we just started chipping away. We had to fall back on our fundamentals, stay patient, and not try to get it all back at once. We went out, executed, and took our points. I'm pretty proud of how the team responded from being behind."
[On the start to the season]
"We're starting out a little bit slower than a normal UCF team does, but we've had so little time to work on it. The offense is actually way ahead of the defense right now, but with the limited time that we've had to train, that's what we've been working on: making ourselves difficult to beat by scoring a lot of points."
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