STATESBORO – Lauren Reichard tallied 10 kills and five blocks to lead Georgia Southern to a 3-1 (23-25, 25-21, 25-21, 25-14) Sun Belt volleyball victory over Troy Thursday night in Hanner Fieldhouse.
Richard hit .450 for the Eagles (7-11, 3-4), while
Megan Chevalier posted 10 kills and five blocks and hit .412.
Anna Wenger had nine kills, and
Joscelin Morrow collected a match-high 21 digs.
Bethany Cullity posted 11 kills, 12 digs and two blocks to lead Troy (6-15, 1-6). Cheyenne Hayes, Page Logan and Savannah Moore all registered eight kills.
The story
Georgia Southern finished the second and third sets strong and ran out to a big lead in the fourth. The Eagles held Troy to .051 hitting in the third and .037 in the fourth.
Down 1-0 in the match and trailing 21-19 in the second, the Eagles outscored the Trojans 6-0 the rest of the way with Reichard tallying a pair of kills and Murray registering a third. The Eagles broke a 19-19 tie in the third by finishing out the set with a 6-2 run. Reichard posted a kill and a block during the stretch.
Murray served up two aces, and Reichard was in on a pair of blocks as GS built a 13-3 advantage to open the fourth en route to taking the set 25-14. GS hit .231 in the set and .219 for the match.
Quotable from head coach Dustin Wood
On Reichard
"Ten kills, one error and .450 are numbers that are going to win matches for us. She executed our game plan pretty well. Our focus was on Jenni Young because she killed us last time, but we held her to negative .045 so they did their job and did well executing what we asked them to do.
On Wenger
Big change in Anna, and I'm proud of her. She took some rips at the ball, and she was in the .200s and just played at a different level that we're used to seeing her play at and hopefully we see it tomorrow night."
On tomorrow night
South Alabama is a good team and undefeated. They way we won that last set tonightwas kind of a statement and hopefully that gives us confidence going into tomorrow.
Next up
The Eagles play host to South Alabama tomorrow in Hanner Fieldhouse. First serve is set for 6:30 p.m., and the contest will be broadcast live on ESPN3. The promotion is Friday the 13th Blackout.
The volleyball program has launched a crowdfunding campaign to benefit Eagle Volleyball for years to come. It will be active until Friday, November 10, 2017, giving Eagle Volleyball only six weeks to reach their goal of $104,030. Contributions to the volleyball program fund commemorative gifts for graduating volleyball players, student-athlete trips to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, recruiting efforts, volleyball-specific training tools, locker room upgrades and overall experience for volleyball student-athletes.
Donate today at Give.GSEagles.com/Volleyball and share this fundraising link to support Eagle Volleyball.
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