With an opportunity to surpass last season’s conference win total, Jen Greeny’s Mountaineers lost their two match winning streak at home against Texas Tech.
WVU returned to the Coliseum on Saturday after taking down Colorado in the teams’ first ever meeting in history. Just as they did to Colorado, the Mountaineers had the opportunity to drop Texas Tech below .500 with a win but let the Red Raiders start hot to gain an easy advantage.
Sets one and two exactly mirrored sets three and four of the match, with Texas Tech taking the first two 25-16 and 25-15 respectively and WVU taking the third and fourth sets 25-15 and 25-16 respectively.
The Mountaineers’ offensive pressure was inconsistent throughout, with attack totals for individual sets ranging from 31 to 41 and a hitting rate ranging from .03 in the first set to .29 in the third.
Texas Tech, meanwhile, stayed at just about the same pace throughout, with 150 total attacks with the highest set total of 35 coming in set two. Unlike WVU, though, the Red Raiders did hit negative for a set, posting a -0.1 rate in the third with four kills and seven errors.
Both of Texas Tech’s losing sets came when the team hit just four kills. WVU just about quadrupled those totals, hitting 15 kills in the third and 17 in the fourth.
Though Texas Tech’s third and fourth sets skewed the stats against it, WVU had no reason to lose the match on paper, having outdone the Red Raiders in every major statistic other than aces, in which WVU had six to Texas Tech’s seven.
With graduate student Lauren DeLo once again leading the offense as the starting setter, the Mountaineers continued to play better offensively. For the second match in a row, DeLo found Hailey Green more often than season hitting leader and Auburn transfer Cassidy Tanton. Green took 56 swings to Tanton’s 39 on Saturday.
Tanton did outplay Green from an efficiency standpoint, though, hitting at a clip of .205 with 14 kills and six errors as Green posted a .107 hitting rate with 17 kills and 11 errors. Both pins were outdone by the middles.
Sophomore Maddy McGath, who leads the team in hitting percentage for the season, hit at a rate of .273 in 22 attacks, posting 11 kills and five errors.
Leading the team, though, was junior Laila Ibrahim, who had an incredible day with 11 kills and three errors in 19 attacks for a hitting rate of .421. Ibrahim also soloed or assisted on 11 of WVU’s 14 blocks at the net.
After playing around with the lineups throughout the match, though, Texas Tech found its groove in set five to shut down a decent day from the Mountaineers. Texas Tech took the fifth set 15-13, ended by a service ace from the team’s leading attacker, graduate student Mia Wesley.
The Mountaineers will attempt to recover on Thursday in Kansas State. The Halloween night game is set to begin at 7:30 p.m.
Photo by Korey Moore, Blue Gold Sports
