RUSTON – The UTEP volleyball team (11-8, 5-1 Conference USA) defeated LA Tech (9-12, 2-4 C-USA), 3-1 (25-21, 25-12, 22-25, 25-20) Friday evening in the Thomas Assembly Center. 
 
A pair of Miners hit double-digit kills, Alianza Darley led the match with 14 kills and Serena Patterson tallied 10. Hande Yetis (20) and Mattie Gantt (16) combined to put up 36 assists for the squad and Hula Crisostomo had a team-high 14 digs. Kaya Weaver achieved a personal-best five solo blocks.  

 
UTEP's all-around performance held the statistical advantage in kills (44-35), blocks (8-5), hitting percentage (.146 - .055), and service ace (7-2).  
 
"Glad we escaped and grinded out a victory against a team that played really hard on the road," head coach Ben Wallis said. "And that's really the sign of good teams. So, when you're not playing your best, can you still find a way to win? That's all we were able to do is just find a way to win when you're not playing your best and we were able to try to do some things in preparation for Western Kentucky on Sunday." 

 
 
SET ONE | The Miners got off to a hot start to begin the match driving up a 8-1 lead that consisted of five LA Tech errors and two aces by Torrance Lovesee. LA Tech evened out the set at 14 but gave up two points to the Miners shortly after to leave UTEP in the lead, 16-14. The Lady Techsters took a timeout as the Miners were two points away from closing out the set. With one last LA Tech error and a solo block by Darley, the Miners were first on the board, 25-21.  

SET TWO | UTEP settled in with an early 6-3 lead aided by three consecutive kills by Sara Pustahija. LA Tech forced their own timeout after recording six errors to fall behind 12-5. After the break, UTEP shredded four more kills and an ace climbing to 18-8. The Miners shook out three more errors from LA Tech and Lovesee wiped the court with back-to-back kills to seal the set win, 25-12.  

SET THREE | The third set started off with 10 errors combined from the teams and only three kills just before UTEP took its first timeout of the match trailing by three, 8-5. The Miners gained the lead, 15-10, after a 9-0 scoring run. LA Tech reciprocated with a 6-1 run of their own compelling UTEP to take a second timeout. As the Miners were down by two, 22-20, Patterson landed two more kills, but UTEP's rally attempt fell short as the Lady Techsters posted back-to-back kill to win the set, 25-22, breaking UTEP's sweep streak over LA Tech.  

SET FOUR | UTEP captured an 11-7 lead in the fourth set that consisted of eight kills. With UTEP up by three points, the teams ping-ponged points for eight serves. After Weaver's career-high solo block and kill, LA Tech took a final timeout and after the break closed the deficit back to three, 23-20. UTEP rattled out an error from LA Tech and a solo block from Vittoria Price locked in the match win, 25-20. 
  

Final Thoughts from Coach Wallis     

"We just never really settled in offensively. We never really found a rhythm to what we were doing. We passed it well enough and served well enough to win. I thought that Darley and Patterson just carried us to the victory. Moving Darley to a more comfortable place to get some more swings for her was good for us. It was a little bit of a risk to try to get her moved a little bit, knowing that she's leading the conference in blocks. But I think getting her more swings is important for us long term. But at the end of the day, we're just trying to make sure that we're preparing for the teams that we got to beat at the end of the year. And that also puts you in a little bit of a predicament where you can lose some rhythm sometimes if you're trying new things and trying to do different stuff for your team in order to prepare for the end of the year. And so that's kind of what I think we looked like today. We just looked a little inconsistent and out of rhythm offensively. And we'll get back in the gym tomorrow and get back in rhythm for a tough top 25 team coming into our gym which we're excited to play." 
 
UP NEXT        
Miners are back in action as they host No. 23 Western Kentucky on Sunday (Oct. 6) at 12 p.m. MT in Memorial Gym.  
  

For complete coverage of UTEP Women's Volleyball, be sure to follow the Miners on social media at @utepvb (Instagram) @UTEPVolleyball (Facebook) and @UTEPVB (Twitter) or visit the official home of UTEP Athletics at UTEPMiners.com.