MURFREESBORO, Tenn. – UTEP Volleyball suffered its second sweep defeat of the season to Middle Tennessee Friday night inside Alumni Memorial Gym.  

UTEP dropped to 17-7 overall and 9-4 in Conference USA play, while MTSU improved to 17-6 (8-3). 

"We got beat by a really hungry team tonight that really wanted to win badly," head coach Ben Wallis said. "They were really good offensively like they have been all year, and we knew coming into it that we were going to have to compete to slow them down offensively and we didn't do a very good job of that." 

Torrance Lovesee paced the Miners with double-digit kills (12). Kalia Kohler led the team with 16 assists. Alyssa Sianez directed the defense with 11 digs. 

UTEP held the statistical advantage in service aces (8-2) but were out hit in kills (48-41) and hitting percentage (.400 - .252). Both teams stuffed seven blocks. 

SET ONE | An intense opening set consisted of a whopping 21 tied scores and 10 lead changes. UTEP took advantage of a pair of MTSU errors to take a 10-8 lead. The Miners took a timeout after taking a four-point lead, 17-13. MTSU regained the lead from a pair of kills, 20-19. A would-be UTEP set win off a Danika Washington kill, was challenged and reversed in favor of the Blue Raiders, and MTSU's Adri Rhoda knocked in a couple of kills to win the set in extras, 29-27.

SET TWO | UTEP grabbed a 7-4 lead, but the Blue Raiders put up three straight kills with a UTEP error to flip the set back to them, 8-7. UTEP knotted the set at 11-all, but MTSU continued to drive up points forcing a UTEP timeout, 15-11. MTSU put up a 5-0 run to close the set, 25-17, and take a 2-0 advantage in the match. 

SET THREE | The Blue Raider utilized three UTEP errors to take an early 7-5 lead. The Miners tied the set at 7 and 8 and went up 9-8. MTSU grabbed the lead heading into the media timeout, 15-12. UTEP came within one point on a kill by Alianza Darley, 17-16, but MTSU stretched the lead by three forcing UTEP to sidebar, 201-6. Sakira LaCour put up a kill and a block to cut the deficit, 21-20, forcing MTSU to take its first timeout. Coming out of the break, both teams went 1-for-1 as the Blue Raiders completed the sweep, 25-23.

Final Thoughts from Coach Wallis
"They really earned a nice well hard fought and well executed victory. Anytime it got tight … anytime they needed a point, several of their players executed well and they really badly wanted to win and it was obvious from the first point of the first set. Congrats to Chuck (Crawford) and his team as they played well. We fumbled off too many easy things to beat a good offensive team like that. This conference has five or six really good teams that are not going to let you walk into their gym and get wins very easily and Middle Tennessee is one of them so we're going to have to earn a hard-fought win tomorrow and we'll be ready to rise to that occasion and complete that task. I really like the way we competed and dug it and blocked it in the third set but it took us too long to get competitive defensively in order to beat a really balanced offensive team." 

UP NEXT  
UTEP will wrap up the weekend with MTSU, Saturday, Oct. 28, at 1 p.m. MT.  

 

Give a gift to UTEP Women's Volleyball by donating to the Point Miners Club.           

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.