EL PASO – Senior Vittoria Price blasted home a career-high perfect 1.000 attack percentage with seven kills on seven attacks to help UTEP volleyball sweep UTSA, 3-0 (25-16, 25-18, 25-23) Friday evening in Memorial Gym.
The Miners improve to 12-9 (6-2 Conference USA) while the Roadrunners drop to 7-13 (2-6 C-USA).
Two Miners hit double-digit kills, Serena Patterson and Torrance Lovesee shredded 11 kills each. Mattie Gantt (23) and Hande Yetis (19) combined to put up 42 assists for the team and Hula Crisostomo had a team-high six digs.
UTEP's all-around performance held the statistical advantage in kills (47-29), blocks (5-3), hitting percentage (.429 - .169), and service aces (7-5).
"I feel good about this win tonight," head coach Ben Wallis said. "We kept playing bullet balls as we like to call it. We're going to keep coming at you. It's like a boxer- eventually those jabs are going to get you an eventual haymaker."
SET ONE | UTEP got the jump on the Roadrunner to begin the match, leading 13-7. UTSA took a timeout and after the break closed the deficit, 18-16, but UTEP put that run to bed and responded with a 7-0 spurt that consisted of five kills and an error from UTSA secured the set with for the Miners, 25-16.
SET TWO | The second set was very much copy-and-paste as the Roadrunners were forced to sidebar after UTEP jumped to a 15-11 lead. UTSA's attempt to ice the Miners didn't go as planned as UTEP kept the lead within four. Back-to-back kills by the Miners brought a second set win on the board, 25-18. UTEP posted a .593 attack percentage with the help of Serena Patterson's seven-kill set, a set-high for any player.
SET THREE | UTSA switched things up in the final set, taking a 12-6 lead forcing the Miners to take their first timeout of the match. UTEP closed in on the Roadrunners, 12-11, but UTSA drove another scoring run to stretch the lead 17-12. The teams continued to exchange points as they entered the red zone, tying the score at 20, 21, 22 and 23. A successful challenge by Coach Wallis forced a replay at 23 even and the Miners put the set away with an ace by Sara Pustahija and a nasty kill by Torrance Lovesee to complete the sweep, 25-23.
Final Thoughts from Coach Wallis
"In the third set I let my team up a little bit because we decided to stop defending and they (UTSA) had a plan, obviously, from the first set to come out and try to beat us with finesse. And at times they executed that. I told my team in the middle of the second set, if they're going to try to beat us with finesse then it's going to be a long night and we've got to make them pay for that. And we didn't do a good job of it in the third set. We did a lot of running and chasing and trying to guess, and that's not the way to play defense, and we know that. So, when we were able to take care of that offensively, we were rolling, and Tori (Price) was great. We've been really hoping to get Tori back healthy for a long time. You know, she was out for a month with a broken finger and so getting her back has allowed us to move Alianza (Darley) over to the right where she's more comfortable and she's a freak athlete over there. So that's been helping us be better offensively, and I'm really excited to see Tori show progress because she's been struggling with her comfort since she got back. But we've been working at it, working at it, and working at it and she showed some real progress tonight and back to what she was doing earlier in the year where she was hitting big numbers for us. So, if we can get her to be another piece of the puzzle offensively, we're going to be really, really tough to beat."
UP NEXT
Miners take on Charlotte on Sunday (Oct. 23) at 11 a.m. MT in Charlotte, N.C.
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.
