WINONA, Minn. – The No. 7 Southwest Minnesota State volleyball team (15-3, 8-2 NSIC) tallied another mark in the win column after sweeping Winona State University (14-5, 6-4 NSIC) on Saturday by set scores of 25-21, 25-21, and 25-22. SMSU is now 8-2 in the NSIC and improves to 15-3 overall. WSU drops to 6-4 in the conference and 14-5 overall.
Leading the way for the Mustangs offense was freshman
Leah Jones. Jones hit an impressive 34 percent on a team-high 14 kills with no errors, while adding 12 digs on the back line. Supporting the attack in an eventful return was junior
Brooklyn Kusler, who smashed 12 kills on 28 attempts for a .393 hitting percentage. Junior
Emma VanHeel rounded out the top Mustang attackers with eight kills on .467 hitting, posting only one error on 15 attempts.
Floating around the court on defense was
McKenzie Tolk. Tolk captured a team-high 17 digs and set one assist with one service ace in the match. Her defensive counterparts were
Natalee Rolbiecki and
Emily Strasser, notching 15 and 12 digs, respectively.
Alisa Bengen paced the SMSU offense with 38 assists, while grabbing herself three kills with no errors on four attempts, good enough for .750 hitting. Bengen added seven digs on defense. Top blockers for SMSU were
Brooklyn Kusler and
Ashley Peltier. The duo recorded a combined nine blocks in the match.
The numbers seemed somewhat even in the match, as SMSU tallied just one more kill than WSU (45-44). Additionally, the Mustangs posted 69 digs in the match to 66 posted by the Warriors, while capturing three service aces to Winona State's two.
Hitting well for the Warriors were a trio of attackers in Sidney Paulson, Jayda Berg, and Gianna Vollrath. Paulson hit 14 kills with seven errors on 39 attempts for .179 hitting. Berg and Vollrath saw similar results at the net, hitting for 12 and 10 kills, respectively, and recorded the two team-high hitting percentages of .355 and .375, respectively. Jace Winchell posted 33 assists in the setter role with one ace and seven digs.
Rylee Vaughn anchored the Winona back line with 20 digs, while second on the team in the stat, Sidney Paulson, posted just 10. The Warriors netted just four blocks to the Mustangs' seven, splitting the total amongst three players.
UP NEXT
The Mustangs are back in action at home on Tuesday, Oct. 17, for a match-up against the University of Sioux Falls (7-10, 3-6 NSIC) at 6 p.m.
