Morehead State volleyball finished with 68 digs and 14 blocks as they topped Southeast Missouri in four sets at Wetherby Gym on Saturday night. The Eagles downed the Redhawks, 25-22, 25-20, 19-25, 25-13.
With the win, the Eagles move to 9-14 overall and 5-5 in OVC play. The win also marked head coach Jaime Gordon's 250th at Morehead State.
"Any wins that go to me, really needs to go to all of our players. It was neat tonight, we had some of our former players here that traveled in and it's always nice to see them," said Gordon. "Tonight was a different story than last night. I thought that we defended incredibly well and we had an incredibly good flow in the backcourt."
Leading the defensive charge was sophomore Merideth Jewell, who finished with 20 digs, while sophomore Maddie Fella recorded nine block assists. Senior Sydney Schuler added a block solo and five block assists, while freshman Karlee Reynolds had four block assists.
On the offensive end, the Eagles utilized a balanced attack as three different players finished with double digit kills. Jewell led the way with 15, while sophomore Jordan Jones added 14 and Schuler had 12. Jones also helped orchestrate the offense as she finished with 18 assists. Senior Bailey Nichol also served as dual threat as she recorded a team-high 28 assists to go along with seven kills.
"Offensively, we did a nice job of countering what SEMO was doing. They did a great job of defending our middles, Karlee and Maddie both had a tough time finding some breathing room in there. But, the result of that was that Bailey, Jordan, Sydney, and Merideth all had big offensive days and a lot of that is credited to how our middles were working so hard and continuing to draw the block," said Gordon.
The Eagles finished the match with 51 kills and a .182 hitting efficiency, while limiting the Redhawks to just 38 kills and a .040 hitting efficiency. After struggling to hit just .075 in the third set, Morehead State closed out the match by hitting .241 in the fourth.
Morehead State remains home for their next four matches. Next week, they host Dayton on Wednesday night at 6 p.m. ET and then return to OVC action to host Tennessee Tech on Friday night at 7 p.m. ET and Jacksonville State on Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. ET.
