Balanced Attack Makes Quick Work of USAO
SILOAM SPRINGS, Ark. -- A balanced attack led by sophomore Kennedy Shelstead sprung the John Brown University volleyball team to its second-consecutive sweep at Bill George Arena on Tuesday (Sept. 6) night.
Hosting first-year Science & Arts (Okla.) in its conference opener, the Golden Eagles (7-2, 1-0 SAC) hit at a .292 percent clip (34-8-89), led by Shelstead's seven kills, riding on a .462 percent attack rate.
"Tonight's win was a good start to our overall conference portion of our season," said head coach Ken Carver. "To get another 3-0 win at home in front of our fans is always a great feeling. Coming into tonight's match we knew that USAO could potentially struggle being that they're a first-year program. We wanted to focus on playing our tempo of volleyball tonight and I felt we did a good job of doing that.
"Our serve receive was relatively on-point once again, which allowed Alyssa (Arnold) and Elizabeth (Williams) to do a good job of running our offense at the speed and with the variety we wanted to see. All of our hitters did a good job of taking care of the ball tonight and being efficient with the swings they took. I really liked the fact they worked to take some of the same shots we intentionally focused on in practice yesterday. To have all of our attackers being able to be offensive threats will continue to make us hard to defend against moving forward."
Freshman Carly McKinney added six kills and six digs while senior Molli Pugh added six of her own. Freshman added four terminations while junior Bailei Brown and Lindsey Davis each contributed a trio of kills.
Defensively, junior Alyssa Arnold tallied a team-best 10 digs while juinor Beth Brankle added eight of her own. On the front line, Shelstead and freshman Jessica Meyer each threw up a solo block in the winning effort.
The Golden Eagles have now won three straight in Siloam Springs, dating back to last season.
Science & Arts (0-3, 0-1 SAC) was led by Olivia Seng's seven kills and nine digs while Elisa Coin and Nena Igbokidi each contributed six in the loss.
The Golden Eagles will return to action in 48 hours, hosting Bacone (Okla.) at Bill George Arena on Thursday (Sept. 8) at 7 p.m.
