FORT MYERS, Fla. - Sparked by 18 kills from
Alexandra Zakutney and 17 kills on 29 swings from
Skylar English, Florida Gulf Coast University moved into the finals of the Atlantic Sun Conference Volleyball Championship with a 3-1 (21-25, 25-22, 25-19, 25-23) victory over Kennesaw State University Friday night at Alico Arena.
The win puts FGCU (25-6) into the conference's championship game for the eighth-straight season. To win the title, the Eagles will have to defeat the team that defeated them most recently in the championship final as Lipscomb defeated North Florida in Friday's earlier semifinal match in five sets.
"I think the most important thing was even as we lost the first set, you could still see there was a lot of calm," said FGCU head coach
Matt Botsford. "There was no panic. Aside from just a couple of things, that set was pretty good. Nobody panicked and maybe they know what they're capable of doing and we just had to make some adjustments and [our team] did a great job of doing that."
"I don't think for one second we thought we were losing that match," said
Lily Tessier, who had 48 assists, 14 digs, five kills and four total blocks. "I think everybody had the right mindset. We were all on the same page and we worked through some different connections and different things in the first set, and we just kept working throughout the match to find it until it clicked for us and then we just ran with that."
English had one of her best hitting performances in an FGCU uniform. The Naples native hit .552 on the night with just one attack error en route to her 17 kills. She also had three aces to account for a team-high 20 points on the night. After 24 kills on 71 swings in the first meeting of the season with KSU, Zakutney needed just 47 to notch 18 kills for the Eagles.
But one of the big factors of the victory was the play of
Oreva Evivie. The redshirt sophomore came off the bench in the third set and finished with five kills and a .625 attack percentage while also collecting four total blocks. In the third set, Evivie came broke an 11-all tie with a kill, then had a solo block to push the lead to two. FGCU would never trail again in the frame. "Oreva made a huge impact," Coach Botsford said. "It was later in the match and she came in cold, but she had just great energy and blocking movement and really created another threat for us."
In the fourth set, with the score tied at 17-all, English notched a kill to break the tie, then Tessier and
Juliana Lentz teamed for back-to-back blocks to stretch the lead to three, 20-17. KSU (18-11) would get within one on two occasions, but on FGCU's second crack at match point, Tessier would smoothly dump the ball into the right-front side of the court where it bounded off an KSU arm and to the floor harmlessly. The win touched off a celebration as the Eagles made their return to the final round of the ASUN's premier volleyball event.
"I think the hardest thing to do in a year that can be long and grueling is to find a way to play your best volleyball at the end of the year," Coach Botsford said. "We've been lucky over the past few years to find what we think is a recipe for that, and our players are proving us right again. I'm excited, but I think they've got something up their sleeve still so we'll see if we can elevate even further because we're going to need to against a really good Lipscomb team."
First serve in Saturday night's championship match is set for 7 p.m. with coverage available on ESPN+.
