University of Houston
<b> SMU </b>
Volleyball Powers Past SMU
10/7/2005 12:00:00 AM | Volleyball
Oct. 7, 2005
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HOUSTON - Justine Farmer registered her eighth double-double of the season as the University of Houston volleyball team dismantled SMU (30-27, 30-20, 31-29) on Friday night at Hofheinz Pavilion.
"Every victory at this point in the season is very important," head coach Bill Walton said.
The home match was the first for the Cougars since September 4th. Houston starts a stretch where it will play seven of its next nine matches at home.
Farmer powered home 11 kills and picked up 15 digs en route to her fifth double-double in her last seven matches, while Kariny Ritter paced the Houston attack smacking 19 kills.
For the second straight match, Zuela Adom slammed a .300 attack percentage knocking four kills on 10 attempts with only one error.
Jaci Gonzalez spearheaded the back row reaching out for 23 digs on the evening, while Millicent Martin chipped in 10 digs.
Game one was a tight affair as the two teams registered 10 lead changes to go along with14 ties. Neither team could build an advantage of larger than four.
Houston (7-8, 2-1 C-USA) recovered from an early 7-3 deficit forcing three SMU (6-10, 2-2 C-USA) attack errors evening the game at eight.
The two teams went back and forth before a Houston timeout sparked a 4-0 run. Ritter smashed back-to-back kills giving the Cougars a 27-24 edge. That was all the breathing room UH needed to take the opening game, 30-27.
The second game started out very similar to game one as the two squads tied eight times in the first half of the game. With the score tied at 13, the Cougars turned on the jets scoring 11 of the next 14 points to grab a 24-16 cushion. During the spurt, Houston got kills from five different players before taking a two-game advantage into the locker room.
Houston fired out in game three to an early 9-4 spread capped on a service ace by Becca Sartori, but SMU charged back on a kill by Natalie Peters to draw even at 16. Peters led all SMU players with 16 kills.
SMU looked like it was going to force game four after taking a 29-27 lead on a Rachel Giubilato kill. Houston regrouped closing out the match with four consecutive points, and claimed its second sweep on the season with a 31-29 game three victory.
"After going out there and winning the first two games you're natural instinct is to relax a little bit," Ritter said. "I'm so glad we were to come back and finish this match in three games."
"You would like to think that some of this momentum is going to carry over into Sunday," Walton said. "It's going to be tough for us to go back over to the Den after practicing at Hofheinz all week."
The Cougars close out the weekend against Tulsa on Sunday afternoon at the Athletics/Alumni Center. First serve against the Golden Hurricane is set for 1pm.
Cougar Bytes:
Friday night was the first home match for the Cougars in 33 days ... Houston improves to 5-0 all-time against SMU ... Three of the five victories in the series have come via sweeps for the Cougars ... Houston is now 2-4 this season in three-game matches ... The Cougars are 5-0 this season when winning game two ... Head coach Bill Walton is four wins away from reaching 600 career victories ... Jaci Gonzalez has amassed over 2,100 career digs ... Justine Farmer joins Kariny Ritter as the only Cougars with over 200 kills this season ... Farmer has put together a double-double in five in her last seven matches ... Ritter has ripped at least 19 kills in five of her last six matches and has reached double figures in her last eight outings ... Houston is 4-2 this season when Ritter leads in kills ... Becca Sartori had a stretch of six consecutive matches with double-digit kills and connecting over a .200 attack percentage snapped in tonight's match ... Sartori is 55 block assists shy of reaching the top 10 in the UH record book ... Zuela Adom slapped a .300 attack percentage for the second consecutive match ... The Cougars are 6-1 when Adom hits over a .200 hitting percentage ... Millicent Martin has registered back-to-back matches with 10 digs.
