IOWA City, Iowa — South Dakota volleyball won its 10
th straight match as the Coyotes swept the Lamar Cardinals 25-18, 25-12, 25-11 Friday at the Iowa Invitational in Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
During their 10-game winning streak, the Coyotes have won 30 of 35 sets and swept five opponents. With the loss, Lamar drops to 0-10.
"It was a complete team win," said South Dakota volleyball head coach
Leanne Williamson. "We came out a little slow in the first set, but were able to clean up our side of the net and compete at a higher level."
Senior
Audrey Reeg led the Coyote offense with 10 kills and three service aces. USD had three more players each swat down five-plus kills. Freshman
Elizabeth Loschen had eight kills with a .500 hitting percentage, sophomore outside hitter
Rachel Schmidt had a career-high seven kills and senior middle blocker
Lindsey Brown added five more.
Junior setter
Brittany Jessen kept the offense going with 32 assists. She added five digs, three kills and one service ace.
Sophomore libero
Lauren Mattison protected the backline with a match-high 13 digs. Reeg and freshman
Anne Rasmussen added eight digs apiece. Rasmussen also tallied three service aces.
Sophomore middle blocker
Kelly Braghini and Loschen each had three block assists. The Coyote defense had 6.0 total team blocks and held the Cardinals to a -.054 hitting percentage.
Set one was tied seven times. With the score knotted up at 14, South Dakota scored four-straight points to force a Lamar timeout. Schmidt tallied back-to-back kills and Loschen added one more during the run. The Coyotes carried that momentum throughout the rest of the set and won 25-18.
"I believe we won the serve and pass game in sets 2 and 3 which made the game flow better for us," said Williamson.
USD opened the second and third sets on 6-1 runs and won 25-12 and 25-11, respectively, and swept the Cardinals 3-0.
"Lamar has the ability to be a very good team, so we are preparing for our next match with them," said Williamson. "We want to fix some things from today and are expecting a high level match tomorrow."
South Dakota continues the Iowa Invitational Saturday as the Coyotes have another match against Lamar at 1 p.m. and then play Iowa at 7 p.m.
