MONROE, La. – Hope Pawlik tallied a match-high 16 kills, 12 digs and two blocks to lead ULM to a 3-0 (25-19, 25-23, 25-14) Sun Belt volleyball victory over Georgia Southern in the conference opener for both teams.

Cathrine Murray led Georgia Southern (7-9, 0-1) with eight kills and eight digs, and Katie Bange posted seven kills, 13 assists and four digs.

Cathrine Griffith notched six kills for the Warhawks (6-12, 1-0), and Sarah Woods finished with five kills and five digs. 

The story
The Eagles were whistled for seven ball-handling errors and hit just .052 in the final two sets of the match. ULM out-blocked GS 7-1 and hit .206 for the match and .417 in the first set.

Pawlik broke a 17-17 tie in the first set with a kill, and that sparked a 7-0 Warhawk run with six points coming during the serve of Albany Schaffer. 

GS led by as many as five points in the second set and was ahead 17-13 when ULM scored three straight points. Another 3-0 run, capped by a Pawlik kill, gave the Warhawks a 22-21 advantage, and consecutive kills by Pawlik and Griffith gave ULM a 2-0 lead in the match. 

The Warhawks opened a 12-6 cushion early in the third set and led 20-10 before taking the set 25-14.

Quotable from head coach Dustin Wood
"It's not the way we imagined starting off conference play. We let huge runs of points go off on us again tonight and beat ourselves."

"We passed so well in the first set and passed well enough to win the rest of the match tonight but had a below average performance from our setters. We are not going to win games with setting performances like the ones we had tonight. We gave away too many points and had to give soft attacks due to our location problems tonight."

"Hats off to ULM. They competed really hard tonight, and we did not. That was one of our keys tonight was to play hard. We have to regroup with a huge match tomorrow. We need better performances out of our entire group. The good thing is we can fix it tomorrow, and we don't have to wait."

Next up
The Eagles travel to UL Lafayette Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET.

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