CHICAGO --- Attacking at a .400-plus clip proved to be the recipe for success for the University of St. Francis women's volleyball team in a 25-17, 21-25, 25-16, 25-14 Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference victory over Roosevelt University on Tuesday night.
The Fighting Saints (2-4, 2-0 CCAC) hit that plateau in each of their three winning sets, topped by their .471 mark in the opening set. They also produced .407 and .400 marks in the other two winning sets. For the match, head coach
Cara Currier's team finished at .259.
Kaylie Sippel was the biggest surprise of the trio of leading attackers. The junior setter authored nine kills with only one error in 16 attempts for a .500 report, while still delivering 25 assists on the night.
Desiree Anderson and
Gabriela Oliveira each registered 12 kills with the former netting her third straight double-double with her team-best 14 digs.
Other contributors included
Leah Talley with eight digs and three aces and
Cadence Wodrich with three blocks.
USF broke a 9-9 tie in the first set in a big way with nine of the next ten points to open up an 18-10 advantage in cruising to the opening lead. Anderson had one kill and two aces during the run.
With the exception of one tie in Set 2, Roosevelt (4-4, 0-2) led from beginning to end, sparked by 7-1 and 11-3 leads at the start. St. Francis would only get as close as 15-13 the rest of the game.
Five ties and one lead change were part of Set 3 before the Saints put together a closing 6-0 run courtesy of two more kills from Anderson.
Set 4 had plenty of contributors to USF's success. St. Francis opened up 7-2 and 10-4 leads at the start before Roosevelt made it a one-point game at 12-11. The Saints then ran off 13 of the final 16 points to wrap up the match. Five different USF players provided attacks in the closing run, including a pair from Sippel.
Notes: With the win, the Saints remained as one of only three unbeatens left in the league … Sippel's nine kills were one off her career-best figure set during her freshman year … USF made only four attacking errors in its three winning sets combined, while totaling 10 against only nine kills in its one losing set (-.026) … Roosevelt was held to a .105 attack percentage, while also hurting itself with 18 service errors … St. Francis competes in the Aquinas College (Mich.)/Cornerstone University (Mich.) Invite this weekend beginning with a 4 pm date with Mount Vernon Nazarene University (Ohio) and a 6 pm contest with Cornerstone on Friday.
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