Lobos Travel to Air Force in Early Week Match
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.– The New Mexico volleyball team concludes the regular season with an early week match at Air Force and a trip to Fresno State with their eyes on Thanksgiving and a spot in the Mountain West Tournament.
New Mexico currently sits at 9-7 in the conference, tied with Boise State and most importantly in the top 6 of the conference standings.
UNM squares off with Air Force on Tuesday at 6 p.m. before facing Fresno State on Saturday, Nov. 20, the final day on the regular season schedule. UNM and Air Force will be the only match played on Tuesday, with the rest of the conference playing Thursday-Saturday. Tuesday’s match will be streamed on the MW Network with live stats also available.
UNM is coming off of a split at home, dropping a four-set match to UNLV before completing the home schedule with a sweep of SDSU on Senior Day. Led by 12 kills and a .545 hitting percentage by Uxue Guereca and 10 kills and an .833 hitting percentage by Avital Jaloba, combined with a match-high 38 assists by Alia Rasmussen and team-high nine digs from Kali Wolf, the Lobos earned their 12th sweep of the season in a 25-23, 25-23, 25-13 win over San Diego State on Senior Day. Of note, Rasmussen’s 38 assists were three more than the Aztecs had as a team.
Freshman Elizabeth Woods tallied one solo and four assisted blocks in the match, matching SDSU’s team total on the afternoon, with the Lobos finishing with 9.0 total team blocks.
With the win, UNM swept SDSU for the first time since Nov. 19, 2016, earned its first season sweep over SDSU since 2009 and earned its 10th home win of the season, the most since 2015.
The Lobos swept both the Falcons and the Bulldogs in their first meetings this season to open conference play back at the end of September.
Air Force enters Tuesday’s match 4-12 in the conference, but two of those wins have come in the last five matches in wins over San Diego State (in five) and against Wyoming (in four). Air Force is 3-11 in three sets, 2-7 in four sets and 2-1 in five sets. The Falcons are 7-4 at home this season.
The Falcons are led by Bailey Keith’s 213 kills, an average of 2.37 per set. Caroline Reinkensmeyer leads the team with 439 assists (4.99 per set average), but Abigail Collins and Lily Landis also have over 100 assists with 141 and 187, respectively. Reinkensmeyer and BrookeLyn Messenger are the top-two servers on the team with 25 service aces. Allie Griffith has tallied a team-best 174 digs (2.45 per set) and Joi Harvey leads in blocking with 89.0 total, 16 solo and 73 assisted. Harvey is second in the MW in hitting percentage at .385 and fourth in MW matches at .386.
Air Force and UNM have a long history, meeting 47 times previously, with the Lobos holding a 41-6 advantage in the series. The Lobos opened Mountain West competition against the Falcons, winning 25-20, 25-16, 25-17. Guereca and Biassou went kill-for-kill in the match with Biassou edging out Guereca 14 kills to 13 to lead all players. The duo nearly matched Air Force’s team total on the night as the Falcons finished with 28 kills in the match.