UB Volleyball Wins All Three Matches at UAB

[dj_paige]

The UB Volleyball team went undefeated in the UAB Tournament to open their season. They defeated Austin Peay 3–0, then Buffalo defeated UAB 3–2 and finally they took down Florida A&M 3–1. Along the way, junior setter Mandy Leigh moved from 9th place up to 7th place on UB's career assist list.

Junior setter Mandy Leigh

Throughout the tournament, there were times when the UB offense struggled, while at other times the UB offense sizzled, and UB was able to open up big leads. Buffalo coach Scott Smith made numerous lineup changes throughout the tournament to address this issue, sometimes successfully, other times not so successful. But overall, Buffalo hit 0.245 in the tournament, which is a pretty good hitting percentage. And Buffalo held their opponents to a combined 0.137 hitting percentage.

Against Austin Peay, the Bulls opened a six point lead in the first set, only to see Austin Peay come back to tie the score at 22. But errors by Austin Peay gave Buffalo the set. In the second set, Buffalo ran out to an 18–4 lead, and won easily. The final set saw Buffalo take a 5-0 lead, then they pushed the lead to 10 before eventually winning 25–19.

Buffalo had defeated UAB a season ago at Alumni Arena, but this was a UAB team that had 9 new players, and the Blazers took sets 1 and 3 to lead the match, while Buffalo's offense could not get going consistently. Buffalo took the fourth set 25–19, hit 0.333 (UB's best in the tournament so far) thanks to a successful lineup change by Smith; and then sticking with that new successful lineup in set 5, Buffalo hit 0.444 and won 15–10. That successful lineup change was to put freshman Manoela Forlin at right side to replace Emma Gielas, who had struggled in the first three sets. Smith also re-inserted senior outside hitter Katrin Trebichavská back onto the court (after she had struggled earlier), and Trebichavská came through with a strong performance in sets 4 and 5 (six kills across the two sets).

Against Florida A&M, Buffalo took the first set 25–20, then lost the next set 25–20. In the third set, the Bulls led 24–20, only to see the Lady Rattlers score the next 3 points. After a Buffalo time out, a kill by Trebichavská ended the set. And then UB ran away with the fourth and final set 25–13.

Across the three matches, Trebichavská was the Bulls leading scorer, followed closely by fifth year middle blocker Abby Leigh. Leigh was also by far the team's leading blocker, with 13 blocks, include 6 solo blocks. (Leigh led the MAC a year ago with 32 solo blocks). Grad student outside hitter Maurine Calande finished 4th on the team in scoring, despite not playing against Florida A&M. Calande picked up 15 kills, the team high, against UAB.

Mandy Leigh had 104 assists in the tournament, an average of 8.7 per set. Leigh also led the team in digs. Junior libero Maria Futey was second in digs.

Other Stuff

Buffalo next plays at Alumni Arena, against DePaul, Montana and Binghamton. All games will be streamed on YouTube. Unlike tournaments held at UB and elsewhere in the past, this tournament will be a little different, with each team playing one match a day, Thursday August 31 through Saturday September 2. Previous tournaments had a day on which a team would have to play twice, as it was at UAB this weekend.

Freshman middle blocker Tehya Shaw, freshman setter Liv Gravatt and freshman defensive specialist Chloe Brown all made their regular season debut this weekend. Sophomore outside hitter Lauren Otten did not play; she was injured a week ago in an exhibition match at Colgate, but was in uniform at UAB.

 

 

Edited August 27, 2023 by dj_paige