| UCF vs. UNC Wilmington Friday, Sept. 9 @ 4:30 PM WATCH LIVE STATS |
UCF vs. Miami Saturday, Sept. 10 @ 7:00 PM WATCH LIVE STATS |
UCF vs. UIC Sunday, Sept. 11 @ 5:00 PM WATCH LIVE STATS |
ORLANDO- After going 2-0 last weekend, the UCF Volleyball team will host the UCF Invitational at The Venue starting Friday Sept. 9. Its first match will be against UNCW followed by Miami on Saturday and UIC on Sunday. All matches will be streamed on ESPN+.
THE KNIGHTS
McKenna Melville was named the AAC Offensive Player of the week. During the game against Syracuse, Melville became the only active player in the country to reach 2,000 kills in the second set. She is leading the conference with 5.75 kills per set.
During the match against Syracuse, out of the 35 assists Amber Olson had 32 assists along with two blocks. The following match against Kansas State, Chloe Scheer led the team with 21 digs and leading the led in blocks was Abby Hansen with five. McKenna Melville had her biggest kill to the end of the game. It was her team-leading 26th kill of the night.
THE FIELD
The Knights start off the Invitational Friday Sept. 9 against UNCW. The Seahawks are 1-5 and had their first win against Murray State last weekend.
Saturday the 10th the Black and Gold take on Miami. The Hurricanes are currently undefeated, coming off of three wins against St. John's, Weber State, and UNLV. Miami is averaging 13.3 kills per set and has 50 blocks on the year.
The Knights close out the weekend against UIC. The Flames went 3-0 during their tournament last weekend making their overall record 5-1. UIC had 162 kills during their last three games, also averaging two blocks per set.
DAGENAIS DIALOGUE
[On facing UNCW]
They have a lot of different ways they can beat you. Don't look at the record and think you know who they are because they've lost a lot of close matches and you know they get better by losing those close matches. They can manipulate the tempo of the attack, the location of the attack, they can run a 5-1, they can run a 6-2, they interchange players. It's really hard to dial in on a team like that. It might be one of those matches where we just have to concentrate on ourselves and just adjust to whatever they're doing, but the way they can get you is by ball handling and then mixing up their attack all over the place really putting a lot of stress on your blockers.
[On facing Miami]
Every year we play them, throw a dart at the board. Miami such a good team and being ranked this year as high as they are they're going to be a seeded team in the NCAA tournament. That's really the measuring stick that we want to be at. We've had some success against them lately and they've had success against us. It's really a rivalry both teams enjoy, and it gets very competitive and very heated, but very respected too. I have the utmost respect for Jose Gandara and his group, and what they do. Every year he puts a top 20 product on the floor and this year it's even better than that. We're going to have to play our best offensively and then we're going to do all the little things right with the blocking assignments, full control serving. Everything has to be on point.
[On facing UIC]
Justin is a coach it's been around a lot of success. Everywhere he goes he's been successful, and he's brought that to UIC now. Within just a couple years they have a good record and they're playing well, and they're beating teams. and you know he's always he's the consummate coach and now he's got a team to go with his brain. They play a very disciplined style of volleyball that they're not going to try to fool you in a lot of ways they're gonna just do what they do and do it really well. He's got the ability to mix some things up, he's got the ability to spread you from antenna to antenna. He's got the ability to be in system a lot. They're a scary team for us to play.