LARAMIE, Wyo. - The Gonzaga University women's volleyball team bounced back from a tough loss to the University of Wyoming Friday night, with a 3-0 (25-18, 25-17, 25-19) sweep over DePaul University Saturday morning in its third match of the UniWyo Wyoming Invite.
"I liked the response our team had after last night's match," explained head coach Dave Gantt moments after the victory. "We didn't take last night's match any further than the court and this morning we came in and talked about being prepared to compete and that is what we did.
"Our team's ability to stay in the match this morning was to execute serve and receive. We ran our offense to perfection in the first two sets and most of the third set. DePaul didn't get any three-point runs on us until the last third of the last set - which made the score five points closer than it should have been."
The Bulldogs, who improved to 2-1 with the victory, closed out the match with 39 kills, with just 14 errors, on 99 total attempts for a season-high .253 hitting percentage. The team combined for 37 assists on those 39 kills, with senior setter Denise Van de Mortel accounting for 30 assists.
"Again, Denise set distribution was on point and the number of kills we got from multiple hitters was outstanding."
Four Gonzaga players tallied five or more kills, including senior outside hitter Laura Day who tied a career-high 12 kills.
"Going into the match we thought our plan was to get the ball to Kylie and Terran based on yesterday's output," explained Gantt of the junior tandem who combined for 28 kills Friday. "Laura started to get hot and it shifted in her favor and she did a nice job."
Day's 12 kills came on 24 attempts. She miss-hit just three attack attempts for a .375 attacking clip.
Edinger added eight kills against the Blue Demons, while sophomore Meredith Crenshaw and Poindexter added seven and six, respectively.
The Bulldogs closed out the match with the 7-4 blocking edge and the 42-38 dig advantage. Edinger finished with a team-high five block assists, while sophomore libero Kristina Lavrisha and freshman Kennedy Wesley had 12 and 10 digs, respectively.
DePaul finished the match with 32 kills on 106 total attempts for a .075 hitting percentage. The Blue Demons were led by Amy Lansky with eight kills.
Gonzaga now closes out the tournament against Oregon State University at 4 p.m. PT. Both the Zags and Beavers enter into the match with a 2-1 record.
"Coming into tournament our goal was to compete well in all matches and win at least two," stated Gantt. "We have now done that but with South Dakota defeating Oregon State earlier this morning we have a chance to add icing to the cake with a third victory against a team from our region. I like our chances to compete well and excited to see what happens in the end."
