Oct. 20, 2009

LUBBOCK, Texas - After a largely competitive match with No. 2 Texas on Saturday, the Texas Tech Volleyball team (2-15, 0-8) hopes to parlay strides made then into a win this week, but the Big 12 challenge is stiff. On Wednesday, Oct. 21, Tech hosts Kansas (10-8, 3-6) for a 6:30 p.m. match and then heads to No. 14 Iowa State (15-3, 7-2) to try to take down the Cyclones.

The Series
Texas Tech holds the all-time advantage with Kansas, 15-12, but hasn't posted a win since Oct. 28, 2006 when the teams played a five-set thriller in Lubbock. Tech holds the all-time advantage with Iowa State, 20-10, but the Cyclones beat the Red Raiders earlier this year in Lubbock and are on a six-match streak in the matchup.

The Coaches
Ray Bechard recorded his remarkable 900th win at the helm of Kansas when the Jayhawks beat in-state rival, Kansas State, earlier this month. Now in his 12th year guiding the program, he boasts a 900-228 (.800 percent) record in 25 years total as a head coach. Christy Johnson-Lynch is 93-56 in her fourth season with Iowa State as the head coach of the impressive program.

How About Some Statistics? (Everyone loves the numbers)
Amanda Dowdy leads Tech's offense with a 3.16 kills-per-set mark (.128 efficiency) and Barbara Conceicao follows with a 2.13 kps average. Conceicao's blocks per set average is 1.40 which is good enough to be ranked second in the Big 12 in that category. Setter Karlyn Meyers directs the offense and dishes an average 7.82 assists per set, while collecting .82 blocks per set as well. Freshman outside hitter Miara Cave has had some impressive kills in recent weeks and has cut her mistakes significantly. She adds 1.45 kps to the offense and most of those kills are of the jaw-dropping variety. (As judged by the "ooh" factor among the crowd.)

Defensively, Tech is led by senior specialist Jenn Goehry's 2.40 digs per set. Freshmen Tory Vaughan and Aleah Hayes provide defensive support to the tune of 1.90 and 1.26 dps. Dowdy has been solid in the back court this season as well and adds a 1.96 dps mark to the team's total.

In the match with Texas, Tech's head coach Trish Knight continued to juggle the lineup in an effort to find a magic combination of players. Seeing time at outside hitter for the first time this season was junior transfer Alexxa Roberts, who responded with a four-kill (no error) effort against the Longhorns potent net game. The combination of Roberts, Hayley Ball, Caroline Courtney and Cave, will likely appear in both matches this week as well.

Academic All-America Nominees
Freshmen and first-year transfer players are not eligible to be nominated for the CoSIDA Academic All-America honor. For Tech, this means that there are only seven players who qualify for the prestigious honor to begin with. That four players have high enough cumulative grade point averages seems noteworthy and truly defines the term student-athlete.

Junior Caroline Courtney (pre-law with a 3.94 cumulative GPA), sophomore Amanda Dowdy (Exercise Sport Sciences and a minor in Nutrition with a 3.67 cumulative GPA), sophomore Karlyn Meyers (Exercise Sport Sciences with a minor in Business and a cumulative GPA of 3.76) and senior Jenn Goehry (Education with a minor in Sociology and a 3.31 GPA) each were nominated for the honor.

Scheduling Notes
In order to insure that fans have as convenient a time to arrive at and enjoy matches, Big 12 volleyball generally waits until all the football television game times are announced before scheduling a match time at an institution where a football game is being played.

The match at Baylor has now been set for a 7 p.m. start time on Halloween as an example of just such a delay in setting the start time. Additionally, a few adjustments were made in times to the Nov. 14, Oklahoma, and Nov. 28, Kansas State matches as the United Spirit Arena will also be playing host to basketball tournaments on those weekends. Match times for both those Saturdays will be 11:45 a.m.