Box Score
St. George, UT --- The Academy of Art women's volleyball team continues to send chills down the spine of their opposition. The Urban Knights emerged victorious yet again today on Dixie State's home court. Overall ART U was 1-3 against the Redstorm before the two game road stint. Now, after registering back-to-back wins, the Urban Knights are dead even with Dixie State, making the all-time win-loss record 3-3. The Urban Knights defeated the Redstorm in five sets (25-22, 25-14, 21-25, 15-25, 15-13) and improve to 9-5 overall and 5-0 in conference with the win. Dixie State drops to 7-5, and 2-2 in conference play.
ART U has now won seven of their last games, including all five conference matches thus far. When matches are taken into extra sets the Urban Knights are 6-1, and haven't dropped a three plus match since their season opener against Northwood University.
Today's game was eerily reminiscent of last night's match. The Urban Knights jumped out to an early two set lead, winning set two in a rather convincing fashion. The Urban Knights were a well oiled machine in the second set, keeping the predicted conference champs to just 14 points, their second lowest set score of the season. Dixie State committed 11 errors in the set alone, while the Urban Knights had an outstanding 84% hitting percentage as a team.
Just as in the previous match the Redstorm were able to rally and take the third and fourth set, pushing the game to a fifth and final set again. The Urban Knights held the Redstorm to just six kills in the final set, while ART U was able to connect for 10 kills.
Dan Yang lit up her opponents by finishing the match with 23 kills. Amy Bush added 11 kills and three block assists. Angela Heath chipped in with nine kills, and Camille Board had eight kills to go with her four blocks.
Defensively the Urban Knights were able to handle all the Redstorm dished out, as four ART U players finished with double digit digs. “Defense was out number one priority today,” said Head Coach Allison Magner. “We were certainly a force to be reckoned with today, as we were solid all the way around.”
Leinani Keanini lead the way with a match high 28 digs. Nicolette Hagan was right behind her, finishing with 19 digs. “We made a line-up change in the fifth set and the team's reaction proved to me that they believed in one another,” Magner said. “Nicky came in as our outside hitter in the fifth set, and was definitely a difference maker in the match today,” Magner noted.
Ashley Irvine had a career high 17 digs in the win, while Yang added 13 digs to her match high 28 kills. Melissa Cheng was two assists shy of tying her season high 56 assists. The sophomore finished with a match high 54 assists, while knocking down three kills, seven digs and two block assists.
For Dixie State Alex Shearer and Madisyn Fitzgerald finished with 14 and 13 kills respectively. Kimee Clark had 37 assists; while Jayci Jeffrees had a team high 21 digs. As a team the Redstorm out blocked ART U 13 - 8
“Our game plan has been to play like a team; the key to our success is total team syngery!” Magner added.
The Urban Knights start a five game home stint next week, capped by a conference match against Hawaii Pacific University on Weds Oct 6 and BYU - Hawaii on Friday Oct 8.
