JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – For the second time in two nights the FGCU volleyball team picked up a hard-fought 3-2 (25-21. 25-22, 20-25, 22-25, 15-12) win, this time over Jacksonville in the A-Sun regular season finale on Saturday night at Swisher Gymnasium.
With the win, the Green and Blue improve to 17-12 overall and 10-3 in A-Sun play, while the Dolphins fall to 14-17 overall and 5-8 in conference.
Sophomore Jessica Barnes blasted a match-high 16 kills and hit .565. Freshman Jill Hopper (Muncie, Ind./Yorktown HS) finished with 12 kills and five digs. Redshirt-senior Jelena Simic (Lazarevac, Serbia/Kolubara Technical/Seward County CC) finished with 15 kills and nine digs. Sophomore Kaitlin Holm (Fort Myers, Fla./Fort Myers HS/Marshall) recorded 13 kills, two service aces and a pair of digs. Freshman setter Gigi Meyer (Gainesville, Fla./Buchholz HS) racked up 52 assists and 10 digs, while senior libero Holly Youngquist (Estero, Fla./Evangelical Christian HS) chipped in with 12 digs in the win.
The Dolphins got a pair of 15-kill efforts from Kathryn Kane and Alliya Drzewiecki.
After winning the first two sets, the Eagles allowed Jacksonville to use early runs to take the third and fourth sets. JU cut FGCU's large deficit to one in the fifth set, but the Eagles withstood the comeback and ended the Dolphins' shot at a second straight A-Sun Tournament berth.
In the fifth set, a Barnes kill helped give the Eagles an 11-8 lead. The Dolphins battled back and cut it to 11-10 on a Kane Kill. Hopper and Holm followed with back-to-back kills to push the FGCU lead to 13-10. An FGCU attack error and another kill by Hopper gave the Green and Blue match point. Leading 14-12, Simic bombed a kill to give the Eagles the set and the match.
The Eagles will be back in action next Thursday in the Atlantic Sun Conference tournament, hosted by Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn. As the No. 3 seed, FGCU will play No. 6 UNF at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 17. The match will be broadcast on ASun.TV. All tournament schedule information can be found at www.atlanticsun.org, and all FGCU information, including recaps and live stat and video links, can be found at FGCUAthletics.com.
