Falcons Sweep UMass-Lowell To Extend Streak To Five Matches

Friday, September 16

Chicago, Ill.

4:30 PM

Bowling Green State University

8-3

UMass Lowell

5-8

Bowling Green

UML

September 16, 2016 | Volleyball

Box Score

By: by James Nahikian, BGSU Athletic Communications

Final Statistics: NCAA Box/Play-By-Play (.PDF) | HTML

CHICAGO – The Bowling Green State University volleyball team defeated UMass-Lowell in straight sets – 25-10; 25-15; 25-11 – Friday (Sept. 16) evening at the UIC Invitational. Bowling Green improves to 8-3 on the season with the victory, and has now won five-consecutive matches.

The sweep is BGSU's fifth of the year. The Falcons have now surpassed last season's win total.

"I am very pleased with our performance today," said head coach Danijela Tomic. "We wanted to reach a milestone of having our first sweep on the road, and we accomplished that today. We challenged the team to play three consistent sets without having too many lows, and they definitely lived up to that challenge. It was great to see all of our players get a chance to play and perform well."

Madeline Garda, who is the top libero in the nation according to digs/set, bumped up her average with 22 more digs tonight (7.33 digs/set). Garda entered this evening averaging 6.24 digs/set.

Jessi Holly hit a career-best .480 (13-1-25) in the victory, and racked up a team-high 13 kills. Isabel Kovacic hit .545 (7-1-11), and was second on the team in kills with seven. Alyssa Maloney and Celena Kanagin tallied five kills apiece, and hit .556 and .400, respectively.

As a team, Bowling Green hit at a staggering rate of .468. Katie Scholten and Isabelle Marciniak set up the Falcon attack, and registered 22 assists and 11 assists. Madeline Brandewie helped the cause with four kills. Kallie Seimet posted nine digs.

The Falcons raced out of the gates, and opened up an 8-1 lead in the first set, which promptly forced UMass-Lowell to burn a timeout. Holly highlighted the early BGSU run with two kills, while a Sunjic kill and Garda ace helped the cause, as well.

UMass-Lowell committed four errors across the first nine points, and after the timeout, the River Hawks committed yet another attack error. After a Scholten kill pushed BGSU's advantage to 10-1, UMass-Lowell finally stopped the run with a kill.

The Falcons extended their lead to double digits at 15-5 following three-consecutive River Hawk errors. Bowling Green nearly held the River Hawks to single digits in the opener, as the Orange and Brown opened up a 22-9 lead, but UMass-Lowell notched one more point in the set. The Falcons took a 1-0 lead in the match with a 25-10 first-set victory.

Garda posted nine digs in the first set, while Holly had a monster of an opener offensively, as she hit .500 with seven kills and no attack errors. Kovacic, Sunjic, Scholten and Maloney added two kills apiece. Seimet chipped in with six digs.

Both squads traded the first 10 points of the second set. Holly notched her eighth kill of the match to knot the score, 5-5, and after swapping points one more time, the Falcons scored three-consecutive points to take a 9-6 lead.

UMass-Lowell countered with a point of their own, but the Orange and Brown went on a quick 5-0 run to take a 14-7 lead, forcing the River Hawks to take a timeout. Across that stretch, Kovacic picked up two kills, and the River Hawks committed two more errors. Out of the timeout, yet another attack error ran BGSU's run to 6-0, but the Falcons committed a service error to end the flurry. However, BGSU had opened up a 15-7 lead.

Five of the next six points were earned via errors, with UMass-Lowell committing the majority of them to inch BGSU's advantage up to 17-11. Holly went on to register back-to-back kills – her ninth and 10^th of the match – to bumped Bowling Green's lead to 19-13. BGSU scored six of the final eight points in the set (25-15) to take a 2-0 lead into the intermission.

Garda followed up her nine-dig opening set with 11 more digs in the second. Holly's production hardly dropped off, as she was hitting .450 (10-1-20) with 10 kills after the second set. Kovacic had seven kills and was hitting .545 (7-1-11), while Maloney and Kanagin had three kills each.

In search of the sweep, the Falcons took a 6-1 lead in the third set, sparked by Kanagin and Maloney kills, as well as a Brandewie service ace. The River Hawks calmed down, and pulled to within four points at 8-4, but four-straight points for the Falcons gave BGSU a 12-4 lead.

Shortly thereafter, Bowling Green opened up a 10-point lead at 16-6 following a Siemet service ace. Bowling Green went on to cruise in the third, winning the set by a score of 25-11 to secure the sweep.
Bowling Green will conclude the UIC Invitational tomorrow with two more matches. The Falcons will take on SIUE at 1:30 p.m., before wrapping things up with a 6 p.m. match versus the hosts of the invitational – the UIC Flames.