Southeast Missouri State University student publication

SEMO volleyball stuns Austin Peay with two back to back wins

Friday, October 29, 2021

In a matchup, with the number one spot on the line in the Ohio Valley Conference (OVC), Redhawks volleyball added two wins to their record as they beat Austin Peay twice at the Houck Field House on Oct. 28 and 29.

Southeast battled with Austin Peay all the way to five sets in the first match with Austin Peay taking the first and fourth set, and the Redhawks taking the second, third, and fifth sets. The two teams absolutely battled in the first match as the first set went all the way to 35. In the second match, Southeast went on to sweep Austin Peay, three sets to none.

Redhawks coach Julie Yankus said the difference maker in the outcome of these two games was her team minimizing errors.

“Today we made less errors. After the first two sets, we only gave them four points a set which is elite level at that point,” Yankus said. “We only had two hitting errors and two service errors a set and nothing else. We forced them [Austin Peay] to earn things, and that was the difference maker between three sets and five.”

Southeast had a total of 36 errors in the first match, 29 of those being attack errors with the other seven coming from service errors. In the second match, the Redhawks cut their errors down by more than half with 14.

Besides minimizing errors, senior outside hitter Laney Malloy attributes these two wins to her team’s overall effort.

“I was most happy in seeing the aggression and hustle our team played with. Crazy balls were getting caught, and people were slamming the balls as hard as they could,” Malloy said. “I haven’t seen our team play like that in a long time, and it’s really good that we’re peaking when it’s most important.”

Malloy led the Redhawks across both games with a total of 43 kills, 24 digs and 7 assists.

Behind Malloy were juniors, outside hitter Zoey Beasley, rightside hitter Colby Greene, and middle blocker Talia Gouard who had 38, 16, and 13 total kills respectively. Senior setter Claire Ochs also played a big role in Southeast’s wins, having a total of 96 assists to go along with 33 digs and 9 kills across two games.

Greene said coming into the game, her team knew they could not come in playing around.

“Austin Peay is a very good team, and they were number one coming into this,” Greene said. “We knew we had to take this game very seriously, work hard during all the points, and not take any points off. Now, It’s really nice to know that we walked out of this weekend with two wins.”

With a now 20-6 overall record, 11-3 in the OVC (second), Southeast will travel to Murray, KY next weekend to take on Murray State as OVC play wraps up in two weeks.

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