Andrew Bell
Staff Reporter | agb022@latech.edu
Junior defensive specialist Morgan Currie (1) faces off against Southern Miss junior setter Sarah Bell (2) as they battle for the ball. The Lady Techsters faced a tough loss against the Golden Eagles, but Tech head coach Adriano De Souza believes more experience and team playing time will lead to future success. – Photo by John Martel
The Louisiana Tech women’s volleyball team was hoping to ground the soaring Golden Eagles Friday night, but instead found themselves picking each other up off the floor of the Thomas Assembly Center.
The Lady Techsters (6-14) took a tough loss to Southern Miss (13-8) last week with a final score of 3-0 (25-23, 25-21, 25-22), slipping to 11th in the Conference USA with a 1-5 conference record.
Tech was led by star senior outside hitter Marta Monne, who notched her 11th double-double of the season with 11 kills and 11 digs. Other key contributors included freshman Gina Cortesi with 10 kills and freshman Carter Mirich with nine kills and six digs of her own.
Southern Miss was led by junior setter Sarah Bell with 38 assists and six kills, a relatively high number of kills for a setter. Junior outside hitter Kylie Grandy also played well, accumulating a game high 12 kills and 10 digs.
Tech head coach Adriano De Souza did not seem too pleased with his team’s overall output after the game, but looked to learn from this experience going forward into their next game against Marshall.
“I thought the intensity of the game was just warm, and we didn’t play hot enough,” De Souza said. “I told the girls that if we play with a little more enthusiasm and if we can show that we are attacking and defending the (opponent) as a team and together we will do better. I told them that we need to play more as a team. If we had put forth more effort, we would have saved more balls on defense and put more balls on the floor on the other side and the other team would be having to work harder to stop our offense or to kill balls against us.”
The Lady Techsters will need to harness their intensity and effort going into a tough road game against Marshall (7-14) Sunday.
“We didn’t run the entire net,” De Souza said. “I think we need to be able to use more of our middles on the right side so we can make sure the other team is concerned about us setting the ball on the strong side. We played too many times on the left side, so we need to be tactically a little more conscious of what we are doing.”
De Souza went on to praise the Southern Miss team and the problems that they presented against his squad.
“They had a very good performance,” he said. “Two of their best three attackers were their middles: Repsher and Coombs.They had a good performance against us. We didn’t respond very well to the kills that they had against us. Their setter got six points against us and that’s too many for a setter.”
De Souza is confident that with hard work and practice, the team will get back on track soon.
“Part of the quest here is to keep training and to keep providing them opportunities to succeed,” he said. “They have to understand that the more we play for each other, the better we will be.”