NEW ORLEANS, La. – The UCF volleyball team (25-6, 18-1), who is the 2021 American Athletic Conference Champion, topped Tulane (17-14, 10-9) in three sets on Wednesday night in New Orleans with scores of 25-20, 25-18, 27-25 to extend to a 14-game win streak, including six-straight sweeps.
UCF also earns its 18th conference win, tying its most AAC wins in a single season as the Knights went 18-0 in 2018 and 18-2 in 2014 in conference play.
"I've always known there was resilience in this team," head coach Todd Dagenais said, "We just made big plays and when we got to the last opportunity where we could either make a play or lose the set, we made a bunch of plays. That's the resilience coming through, that's the toughness and that's the confidence. A road win is a road win and you take them any way you get them."
McKenna Melville recorded her 16th double-double of the season with 19 kills and 13 digs while Amber Olson picked up her ninth of the season with 42 assists and 11 digs.
Claudia Dillon came out swinging to tie a career-high of 11 kills while hitting .529 and picked up two blocks and two aces. Anne-Marie Watson also hit double digit kills with 10, hitting .318, to crack into the program's all-time top-10 career kills with 1,206.
Nerissa Moravec's three blocks tonight moved her up to second all-time in career blocks assists with 477, only behind current teammate Watson. She also notched eight kills while hitting a team high .583.
Chloe Scheer started things off right, getting an ace for the first point of the match. Tied 9-9, Tulane found some momentum with a 5-0 run to lead by four, 13-10, but Melville and Dillon started heating up to lead the Knights on a 7-0 run, 16-13. From there, UCF finished strong to win the set, 25-20.
The Knights kept it rolling to grab the first six points of the second, 6-0, to set the tone early. UCF used three 3-0 runs throughout the second to quickly lead 19-10. Tulane tried to stick with UCF, but it was set point, 24-15. The Green Wave battled with a 3-0 run, but the Knights got the second set win in 25-18 to lead 2-0, heading into the third.
Tulane came out hot in the third set, leading 4-1 early, before getting a five-point lead shortly after 9-4. The Green Wave kept a slight edge throughout the set and grabbed its biggest lead of seven at 20-13. But the Knights chipped away to close in while the Green Wave had five set points. UCF then tied it up at 24 with a 4-0 run before the two teams traded points. In the end, it was UCF who was able to secure the set and match win with a kill from Heidi Bonde, 27-25.
TODD'S THOUGHTS
[On the offense]
We went out there and we had to earn it. We have 16, 19, and 18 kills, that's insane. Overall, we had the distribution we're looking for amongst our five hitters. I thought we managed the flow of the game really well and we did the best we could when we found ourselves in a short position.
[On Tulane]
Tulane did not give us anything, we had to go out there an earn it. They were not going to let us block them. They were tipping and rolling everything.
UP NEXT
The Knights close out the regular season with is final match at Houston on Friday night, November 26.
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