BOCA RATON – The UTEP volleyball team (8-7, 2-0 Conference USA) set a season high .345 hitting percentage in its second road win in Florida with a four-set victory over Florida Atlantic (10-4, 0-2 C-USA), 3-1 (17-25, 25-22, 25-19, 25-17) Sunday morning to close out C-USA opening weekend.
Sara Pustahija led the squad with 16 kills and 18 points while hitting a career high .500, and Kaya Weaver hit a team-high and personal best of .818 on 10 kills. Hande Yetis (18) and Mattie Gantt (17) combined to put up 35 assists for the Miners and Alyssa Sianez had a team-high nine digs.
UTEP held the statistical advantage in kills (55-45), blocks (9-7) and hitting percentage (.354 - .246). Boh teams recorded eight service aces.
"I'm very pleased to leave Florida with back-to-back wins," head coach Ben Wallis said. "I'm really proud of our effort under some adverse situations again, and it's good to see these guys respond and get out there and get the W, so a really good team win honestly."
Single Match Season Highs
SET ONE | Florida Atlantic opened the match with an early 4-1 lead. The Miners landed two kills and four FAU errors shrunk the deficit 8-7. The Owls pressured the Miners after a 8-4 run extended the lead 19-11. The Miners put up a pair of kills and blocks late in the opening set, but their effort was a little too late as FAU closed the set with a 6-3 run to win the se 25-17.
SET TWO | FAU won the first point, but UTEP's Serbian duo racked up three kills each to take the lead, 8-4. The Miners and Owls exchanged points for 12 serves and at 17 even Uskokovic broke the tie with a kill and block forcing FAU to sidebar. Three timeouts occurred over six serves, but the Miners battled it out to come away with the set win, 25-22.
SET THREE | Another back-and-forth set dawned on the court. At 10-10, Uskokovic and Patterson put kills down the line to take the lead, 12-10. The Miners drove a 7-0 run with two FAU timeouts in the midst of it that didn't faze the Orange and Blue. The Owls scored four-straight to close in on UTEP's set-point, 24-19, but Patterson capped the set win with a kill to lift the Miners to a 2-1 advantage.
SET FOUR | UTEP drew a 6-3 lead, and the Owls took an early timeout in an attempt to ice the Miners. After the break, UTEP outscored the Owls 7-2 to hold a 13-6 lead. FAU gained some momentum after falling behind 16-9 and shrunk the deficit by two, 18-16. UTEP sparked a 7-1 run to win the set 25-17 and with the match, 3-1.
Final Thoughts from Coach Wallis
"Knowing that we were down two starters, Ema (Uskokovic) took a big step in. She has been battling in the depth chart to try to get back into the lineup and she showed us today that she's capable of helping us. And Kaya (Weaver) has just been putting together solid match after solid match offensively and for her to get ten kills on 11 swings hitting .818 is so awesome. Sara (Pustahija) got super hot from the get-go hitting it. But the cool part about our team is that we had SP (Patterson), one of our veterans who's been playing on the right all year, she had to go back to the left today and she had to stay on the floor and pass six rotations for us, and really steadied us out and she put on a show in the fourth set just doing a lot of things that helped us win.
UP NEXT
The Miners will be back in action as they host LA Tech and North Texas Sep. 30-Oct.1.
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.
