Volleyball Falls to SMU, 3-1

Friday, November 6

Memphis, Tenn.

7:00 PM

University of Memphis

14-12, 5-8American

SMU

22-3, 12-1American

SMU

Memphis

Photo by: Lance Murphey

Nov 06, 2015 | Women's Volleyball

Box Score

Tigers fall to 5-8 in conference play.

By: Tammy DeGroff

MEMPHIS – Memphis (14-12, 5-8 American) got 14 kills from Catlin Lilly and 23 digs from Lindsey Purvis and took one set from league-leading SMU (22-3, 12-1 American), but could not come any closer for the upset, falling 3-1, Friday night.

"I thought we had a great game plan," Head Coach April Jauregui said. "I think we picked up our defense quite a bit and generated some opportunities to score, that's what we focused on this week. We were able to get a lot of players in in some different roles and our kids responded, but SMU is just really good."

Both teams' offenses had a rough start to the second conference matchup in three weeks between the two teams. Both hit -.021 in the first set, but three Memphis ball handling errors, a one-ball difference in service errors and one extra Mustang block gave SMU a five-point cushion in a 25-20 opening set win.

The second set started quickly in the visiting team's favor, as SMU went up 4-1 in the early going. But a kill from Oluchi Agomuo and a block from the tandem of Lilly and Torika Baleilekutu helped Memphis tie it up and take an 8-7 lead. The score would to up at 9 before a kill from Lilly and Baleilekutu's first service ace of the season pushed Memphis up 11-9. A Tiger ball handling error would let the Mustangs creep back to an 11-all tie and the score would knot up again four more times before a block from Summer Morgan and Lilly and a kill from Morgan put Memphis up 19-17 and forced an SMU timeout. Out of the timeout, Michaella Moss pushed her team's lead to 21-18 and despite three straight Memphis service errors, Memphis found itself up 24-21 after a kill from Agomuo, who hit .556 in the second set. Memphis served up one service error to help SMU fight off one set point, but Agomuo downed her fifth kill of the set to tie the match at 1-1 with the 25-22 second set win.

The Memphis set win was the first set the Mustangs had lost in five matches. As part of SMU's 11-game winning streak coming in to the Elma Roane Fieldhouse, they had won four straight matches in league play, 3-0.

And the Mustang train got rolling again in the third set. Memphis found itself down 7-1 in the early going, then lost starting setter Veronica Zimmerman for the remainder of the match as she was injured running down a stray pass that was killed by Agomuo. SMU took advantage of the hiccup in the Tigers' game plan and closed out the match with a 25-19 win in the third set and a 25-9 win in the fourth to claim their 12^th straight victory.

Lilly finished with 14 kills, while Agomuo finished with eight. Cailin Bula led SMU with 12 kills, while Abbey Bybel finished with 10. Janelle Giordano finished with nine total blocks as SMU out-blocked Memphis 16-8, including a 5-0 edge in the fourth set. Morgan Heise led all players with 32 digs.

Memphis remains at home with Tulsa coming to the Fieldhouse on Sunday for a 1 p.m. match.