The UMBC Volleyball team continues its daunting early season schedule with three matches in Ohio. The Retrievers face Bowling Green on Friday at 3 p.m., host Wright State on Saturday at 6 p.m., and then #22 Dayton on Sunday at 12 p.m.

The Retrievers will look to pick up their first win of the season after playing three tough matches last weekend at No. 8 Purdue.

In the final match of the weekend,  Abby Erickson had seven kills on .545 hitting but it wasn't enough as the UMBC Volleyball team fell in three sets to (RV) Kansas State (25-14, 25-9, 25-14) on Sunday morning.

Hannah Howard, who was named to the All-Tournament Team, had a team-best 11 digs and Izzy Ostvig added 11 assists. Hannah Dobbs had five kills, while Mia Bilusic and Cluadia Llamas had four each. 

Mila Ilieva (three kills) and Helen Frankovich each had a block, and Serin Maden chipped in nine assists.

Scouting Bowling Green:

• Bowling Green went 1-2 at home in the Best Western Invitational, sweeping Chicago State before being swept by both Illinois and Cincinnati
• Against Cincinnati,BGSU and UC played a close first set with a late Cincinnati run making the difference. Cincinnati carried their momentum into the second set for a 2-0 lead. BGSU challenged in the third set, but another late run for the Bearcats pushed them in front for the 3-0 final
• In that match, Lauryn Hovey landed an ace in the match giving her 90 career aces. The mark ties her for seventh during BGSU's Rally Scoring Era. 
• Jessica Andrews logged a block for the Falcons, bringing her career total to 200 in the Orange and Brown. 
• Freshman Anna Sitek led the team in assists with 11 and added her first collegiate kill and her first three collegiate digs. 
• Isabelle Laube tallied a career-high five digs in the match for the Falcons and added her first two career assists in the match as well. 
• Paige Parlanti made her BGSU debut landing a kill on two attacks. 

Scouting Wright State:

• The Raiders opened the season with three sweeps in a 3-0 weekend at the Bobcat Invitational at Ohio University. 
• In the weekend closing sweep of the hosts, the Raiders were paced by Sam Ott as she tallied her first double-double of the season with 11 kills and 12 digs, hitting .333 overall while adding two assists and a block to her final stat line. 
• Mya Ayro notched her second-straight 15 kill effort in the win, closing her first weekend as a Raider with three double-digit kill performances. 
• Elena Dubuc and Reilly Zegunis each chipped in six kills as Zegunis finished with five blocks and Dubuc added three.
• Lauren Yacobucci turned in her own double-double for the first time in 2024, passing out 34 of the Raiders' 44 assists to go along with 15 digs, while Jenny Wessling's 18 digs led all players.
• Yacabucci was named Bobcat Invitational MVP and both Ayro and Ott were selected to the all-tournament team.
• Yacobucci was also named the Horizon League Player of the Week as she passed out 30-plus assists in Wright State's three sweeps to open the 2024 season, finishing with and 11.89 assists/set average with her 107 total assists in nine sets. She tallied 41 assists in Friday's opener against Appalachian State, the second-most assists of her career, before following that up with 32- and 34-assist efforts on Saturday.
• She added nine kills throughout the weekend and 31 total digs, collecting eight digs in the both of the first two matches before notching her first double-double of the season Saturday night with 15 digs to go along with the 34 assists.

Scouting #22 Dayton:

• The Flyers are 2-0 after defeating Northern Iowa in five and sweeping Florida International at home last weekend. They were tied at one set each with (RV) Ohio State before humidity and unsafe court conditions caused the match to be declared a No-Contest.
• Against FIU, UD coasted to victory, sweeping by scores of 25-18, 25-15, 25-19.
• The redshirt senior duo of Lexie Almodovar and Brooke Smith carried the offensive load for the Flyers, registering 13 and 12 kills, respectively.
• Smith's came at a career-best .688 clip, while Almodovar hit at an impressive .379 clip.
• In the opener, they rallied after trailing 2-1 after three sets.
• The Flyers stormed back with a convincing 25-16 win in the fourth, and a 15-11 victory in the decisive fifth.
• Dayton committed just one attacking error in the final two sets, hitting a robust .483 to grab the momentum in the fourth set while holding the Panthers to just .143, and then continued that trend in the fifth by hitting .348 and holding UNI to a .148 mark.
• UD finished the night out-hitting UNI .264 to .200, while also having twice as many blocks (16.5 to 8.0).