Volleyball Edged by East Carolina, 3-1

Sunday, September 27

Memphis, Tenn.

1:00 PM

University of Memphis

10-5, 1-1American

East Carolina

8-5, 1-1American

ECU

Memphis

Photo by: Joe Murphy

Sep 27, 2015 | Women's Volleyball

Box Score

Tigers come back to win third set but fall to 1-1 in league play.

By: Tammy DeGroff

MEMPHIS – It began and ended as a defensive affair with some offensive sparks as East Carolina downed Memphis 3-1 in American Athletic Conference volleyball action Sunday in the Elma Roane Fieldhouse. The win is the first conference win of the season for East Carolina (8-5, 1-1 American) and drops Memphis to 10-5 overall and 1-1 in conference play.

"It was really about playing our side of volleyball," Head Coach April Jauregui said. "Unfortunately, and we'll talk to the team about it, I don't think they came ready to play a conference volleyball game today and ECU did. We fought back and put ourselves in position, but ECU deserved to win. They were more prepared than us, they fought harder than we did and it showed on the court."

It was a sluggish start for both teams' offenses, thanks to the scrambling defenses. Both teams hit under .100 in the opening set and the two combined for 62 digs in the opening set alone. The Pirates won the first set 27-25 as Memphis' three service errors came back to haunt them in the tight scoring set.

The second set was not any prettier for either offense. Again, both teams hit under .100, with ECU out-blocking Memphis 4-3 and the Tigers committing four service errors to none for the Pirates in the 25-20 ECU second set win.

Following the break, Memphis regained some momentum in its offense, hitting .250 for the set and riding five kills from McKenzie Hayes to a 25-21 third set victory. Lindsey Purvis had eight of her 19 digs in the third set alone, helping Memphis to the set win. The Tigers also cut down on their own errors, with just one service error, and out-blocked ECU 2-1 in the set victory.

The fourth set was another tightly-contested affair, as the score tied a game-high nine times and featured five lead changes. Memphis was up 21-15 off a Faith Myers service ace when the Tiger errors began to crop up again. A service error and a pair of Memphis attack errors tied the game up at 23. Memphis took a 24-23 lead off a kill from Summer Morgan, but ECU downed three straight kills to grab the 26-24 fourth set win and pick up their first conference road win of the year. For the day, Memphis had 10 service errors and hit .156 on 180 attacks.

Oluchi Agomuo and Catlin Lilly each had 15 kills for Memphis, while McKenzie Hayes added 12. Torika Baleilekutu sparked the fourth set Memphis rally that put the team up and finished with seven kills and a .375 hitting percentage.

Agomuo led Memphis with a career-high 21 digs, while Purvis added 19 and Faith Myers added 12.
Myers, making her second career start for Memphis, finished with 50 assists, making her the first Tiger to dish out 50 assists since Veronica Zimmerman had 51 in a road game at USF last year.

"I'm not disappointed in some of the performances that we saw," Jauregui said. "I'm disappointed in mentally how we approached the match. That's something this team has to learn, you have to be ready to play every single night and if not, you're going to walk away with an L. I believe this team can do a lot of damage if we're together and everyone's doing their job. I think you can see that in those moments today. We had 20 kills in the fourth set, so we're capable of it, it's just being ready to play and every person coming out of the match ready to go."

Ashton Mares led East Carolina with 14 kills. Ashley McRae added 10 kills and a .429 hitting percentage, while Erika Figueroa led all players with 25 digs in the four-set win.

Memphis heads to the northeast next weekend to face Temple, Friday, and Connecticut, Sunday.