Oct. 13, 2003

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - After playing 17 of their first 20 matches on the road to open the season, the University of Memphis volleyball team (18-2, 2-1 C-USA) is finally ready for some home cooking. The Tigers will return to the friendly confines of the Elma Roane Fieldhouse for a non-conference match Tuesday against Christian Brothers University (11-14, 3-3 Gulf South Conference), at 7 p.m.

"This is a nice time of the year to be at home," Head Coach Carrie Yerty said. "October is always such a tough month, everyone is getting a little tired and we're just past the halfway point, so it'll be nice to have this four match stretch in front of our home fans."

The cross-town rivalry has always been a competitive one for both volleyball teams. While Memphis leads the overall series 3-0, the two teams went four games last year and five in the second meeting between the two teams in 2000.

"This match always tends to be a great one for us because CBU tends to play really good here and they usually bring a lot of fans, so we are definitely taking this match seriously," Yerty said. "But we're looking forward to finally being back at home too, hopefully we can get our home stand started out with a good match here."

CBU brings a fairly young team into Tuesday's match-up. Second-year head coach In-Sik Hwang did some traveling to sign his freshman class, bringing in players from Alabama, Washington, Arizona and Indiana. But despite five freshmen on the roster, CBU has gotten some solid performances from the newcomers already this season.

Led by sophomore transfer Nan Kimbrell's 3.13 kills per game, two freshmen are also averaging over two kills per outing. Middle Laura Washington is averaging 2.69 kills and 1.0 blocks per game, while playing in 51 of CBU's 90 games, while freshman Krista Gyarmati is averaging 2.22 kills per game. The Bucs also have a freshman setter running the show in Washington native Lauren Amundson averaging 9.79 assists per outing. Kimbrell also leads the team with 44 service aces while lone senior Breanne Boyd has chipped in 43 aces.

Being such a young team, it is not unusual that the Bucs are still trying to be more consistent in their passing game. CBU has 228 receiving errors, compared to 133 for their opponents.

"Our focuses for CBU will be our serve and passing game," Yerty said. "We struggled in passing at TCU and turned it around at Houston, we'll have to be prepared."

Memphis is coming off a split on the road in league play over the weekend. Memphis was swept at TCU, snapping a 14-match winning streak, before picking up the program's first-ever win at Houston, 3-1.

Junior Tiara Gilkey and senior Brittany Barnett are getting a lot of help on the outside with the emergence of sophomore outside Nancy Nellans.

"Nancy is a competitor in everything she does," Yerty said. "She's done a nice job of stepping it more of a leadership role, both offensively and defensively. With her and Shella, they are both taking some of the pressure off Tiara and Brittany. And our team really gets fired up when Nancy gets fired up."

Gilkey currently ranks sixth in Conference USA with 4.14 kills per game, while Shella Neba ranks third in hitting percentage with a .353 clip. A pair of Tigers are also atop the service aces category, as freshman Hristina Slancheva leads the league with a 0.58 kill per game average, while junior Heather Watts is second with 0.50 aces per game.

"We know that as we venture deeper into our conference schedule that we need to add some new things to our offense and improve some of our defensive schemes so that we can throw the other teams off balance."