Angelica Crump, UCF Volleyball Team Survives in Five Sets Against SMU in Dallas
The UCF volleyball team will end the regular season at UTEP Tuesday.
DALLAS, Texas (UCFAthletics.com) – Playing in Moody Coliseum, a venue the UCF volleyball team had never won at, the Knights survived in a thrilling five-setter (25-21, 18-25, 25-20, 12-25, 18-16) against SMU for its 19th win of the season and program-best 11th in Conference USA Sunday afternoon. With postseason hopes still intact, UCF will travel to UTEP in its regular-season finale Tuesday night.
“It’s one of those matches that we needed to win and there are some nights where it feels like there is something going right for you other than your heart, desire and togetherness,” head coach Todd Dagenais said after the match. “That is really what it felt like today. We didn’t have a lot of things go well for us, but the team showed sometimes the togetherness and the fight is enough to get you over the top.”
The Knights found a way to win the match despite hitting under .200 for just the eighth time this season (.116). Dagenais is thrilled with his team’s ability to win even when the offense isn’t hitting for a high percentage.
“This is a classic example of really grinding it out,” Dagenais added. “We didn’t do a lot of pretty things. What we did do is just worked really hard. People are going to look at the stats and they will show that SMU won. I think the difference for us was that we had a ton of resolve. Literarily, that last set could’ve gone either way. We just found a way to get a break and make a huge stunt-block play at the very end.”
Sophomore Angelica Crump (Atlanta, Ga.) willed the Knights in the fifth set with five of her match-high 24 kills. She tied her career-high in the category, and the Knights tallied four total blocks in the deciding stanza, including the game-sealing swat when SMU’s Caroline Young was denied by rookies DeLaina Sarden (Lawrenceville, Ga.) and Ashley Gialenios (Johns Creek, Ga.).
As she has been all season, senior Rachel Vukson (Oakville, Ontario) came up huge for the Knights with 52 assists and 15 digs for her 15th double-double of 2011. She was all over the floor early on, recording her 10th dig in just the third set. Junior Meredith Murphy (Austin, Texas) led the team in digs with 17 as both fellow third-years Dani Harrison (Tallahassee, FL) and Evija Vilde (Riga, Latvia) notched double-digit defensive helpers.
Vilde also smacked down 14 kills to go along with her 12 digs and Sarden provided 13 kills from the middle blocker position. Although the Mustangs (14-17, 10-9) out blocked the Knights 19-9, UCF defenders came up big when the match was on the line. Junior Tory McCutcheon (Milton, Ontario) led the way with three block assist and a solo swat.
