Pugh, McKinney double-doubles break losing skid at four
SILOAM SPRINGS, Ark. -- Senior Molli Pugh and freshman Carly McKinney each notched a double-double and the John Brown University volleyball team broke a four-match losing streak by taking out Southwestern Christian, 3-1 (22-25, 25-17, 25-18, 25-23), on Thursday (Oct. 13) inside Bill George Arena.
Pugh and McKinney both totaled 15 kills and 17 digs leading a John Brown (15-10, 6-6 SAC) offense that hit .261 percent (16-5-43). Junior Beth Brankle scooped a match-best 20 digs and junior Alyssa Arnold threw around 30 assists in the victory over SCU (13-10, 3-9 SAC).
"It was good to finally break through and get back into the win column tonight," admitted head coach Ken Carver. "As a team we've had to battle a bit of adversity due to injuries and illness where we've had to play multiple line-ups during the course of the past two weeks. Most teams have to deal with this at some point and time in the season and our time happened to be right in the middle of our conference schedule.
"In the midst of this, while we haven't had the success we would have liked our players have kept working hard. Southwestern Christian is very similar to us in that they saw a lot of success early on and now have struggled to finish and wins games so we knew we had a battle on our hands tonight. Our defensive effort after the first set ignited our team's offensive output in the second and third sets."
Freshman Jessica Meyer added nine kills and hit a team-best .412 percent, adding two solo blocks and assisting on two more. Also posting two solo and two assists was sophomore Kennedy Shelstead, which helped power the Golden Eagles to 12 team blocks.
After falling in the first set, JBU rebounded to hit .304 percent (45-11-113) and limited the visitors to just .169 percent.
Shaeli Monroe notched 15 kills and hit .419 percent while Heather Pruitt added 10 terminations. Courtney Traylor passed out 49 assists in the Eagles' third-consecutive loss.
JBU will return to action on Friday (Oct. 21) in Ft. Worth to take on Texas Wesleyan at 7 p.m.
