SAN JOSE, Calif. – It didn’t take much for the University of New Mexico volleyball team to get going as they claimed a 3-0 sweep of San Josè State to start Mountain West action Thursday evening at Spartan Gym. They took the sets by scores of 25-15, 25-19 and 25-12.
“We really came out fired up,” said Head Coach Jeff Nelson. “I thought we looked really good and the first game went really well. We went to 4-4 and then jumped up to a big lead. We transition well which is something that we really focused on this week in practice.”
We had a great first game hitting, hitting almost .500 as a team. We just got great output across the board.”
The first set took a little bit for the Lobos to get a groove going as the Spartans took an early 4-2 lead. But New Mexico went on a 14-2 run to take 15-6 lead. In that run, the Lobos got big kills from senior Chantale Riddle and a couple of aces from sophomore Julia Warren. Junior transfer Simone Henderson also contributed with a big block and a couple of kills. The Spartans began to work their way back but kills from Riddle and Warren claimed the first set victory.
The second set proved to be all Lobos as they took an early 4-0 lead. The Lobos took their biggest lead of the set at 17-7 after a kill from Riddle. The Spartans worked their way back into the set by closing the gap up at 22-19 but the Lobos used a kill from junior Skye Gullatt and two Spartan errors to take the second set 25-19.
New Mexico pushed hard to start the third set, starting with a 8-0 run with redshirt junior Hannah Johnson providing the tough serving for the Lobos. The Lobos used a balanced attack from the front row getting four kills from Riddle, two each from sophomore Cassie House and Gullatt and one from Johnson.
The Lobos outhit the Sparts .240 to a (-) minus .238. The Spartans tallied a total of five service errors, six reception errors and 23 attacking errors. The Lobos had 37 kills, 32 assists, 28 digs and 11 blocks.
Riddle led the Lobos with 12 kills, hitting .600 for the match. She picked up five blocks and five digs. Henderson tallied six kills to go along with five blocks. Gullatt also finished with six kills and five blocks.
“Chantale hit .600 tonight and scored about 15 points for us. She just keeps getting it done for us. We’ve asked her to quit worrying so much about other teams and our team and just play. She is doing a really nice job. She has made great adjustments over the past couple of weeks.”
We scored 22 points in the middle and that’s really awesome in a three-set match. We are getting the ball to the middle and they are hitting the ball quick and scoring. I was really happy with that. We got great output and more importantly we picked up a lot of blocks in the 3-0 game.”
The Lobos are now 8-5 on the season and 1-0 in Mountain West action. They will finish up the opening weekend of conference by traveling to Nevada for a match on Saturday, starting at 2 p.m. PT/3 p.m. MT.