Morgantown, W.Va. -- The UMBC Volleyball team started its season in style with a dominant sweep of UTRGV (25-14, 25-13, 25-21) on Saturday afternoon at West Virginia's Country Roads Challenge.
The Dawgs, who hit .419 for the match with only eight attack errors, were led by
Hannah Dobbs' 15 kills, four digs and career-high tying four blocks. After missing last season due to injury, redshirt freshman middle
Alissa Grant had a spectacular debut, finishing with six kills on eight attacks with no errors and six blocks.
Jalynn Brown hit .636 with seven kills and no errors, while
Helen Frankovich hit .500 with six kills and six blocks.
Claudia Llamas was second on the team with eight kills on .375 hitting, and
Isabel Ostvig led the match with 38 assists and seven digs.
Hannah Howard had a match-best 12 digs to go with four assists, while freshman
Dasia Johnson started and picked up the first kill of her career and added five digs.
The Retriever defense was staunch as well, holding UTRGV to .076 hitting, while having 12 blocks and 38 digs.
The first set was tight until a 7-3 Retriever run made it 17-11. The Vaqueros cut the deficit to 19-14, but UMBC scored the final six points of the set to take it. The Dawgs hit .640 in the first set with 16 kills and only a single error. UMBC led wire-to-wire in the second set, scoring the first two points and never looking back as the lead quickly ballooned to 17-5 as they cruised to victory in the set, hitting .429 with six blocks.
In the third set UTRGV took an early 3-2 lead, it's first lead since 2-1 in the first set, but the Retrievers would score the next three points to re-take the lead. The Vaqueros did tie the set at 11 thanks to a 3-0 run, but kills by Frankovich and Dobbs gave the Dawgs the lead back for good. The lead grew to 20-13, before a UTRGV run cut the deficit to 22-19 and forced UMBC to call timeout. Grant got a kill out of the timeout, but the Vaqueros scored the next two points to make it 23-21. The Dawgs would put the game away, however, after Frankovich got a kill and then teamed up with Dobbs for the match-winning block.
UMBC will face host West Virginia on Sunday at noon
