Murray State University Athletics
Murray State
Eastern Illinois
Racers win seventh straight match, to play SEMO in first round of OVC
11/15/2003 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
The Murray State volleyball team won its seventh straight match, closing out its regular-season schedule with a 3-0 win over visiting Ohio Valley Conference rival Eastern Illinois, 30-27, 30-21, 30-16.
The match was MSU head coach David Schwepker's 100th career OVC regular-season match as a Racer coach. He is 54-46 against the OVC at Murray State.
Murray State will be the No. 6 seed in the OVC Championship Tournament, which opens Thursday at Morehead, Ky. The Racers (15-11, 9-7 OVC) will take on No. 3 seed Southeast Missouri (11-18, 10-6 OVC) in the first round on Thursday at 6 p.m. CT. The other first-round pairing will see No. 4 seed Austin Peay (15-15, 10-6 OVC) take on No. 5 seed Eastern Kentucky (21-12, 10-6 OVC) at 4:30 p.m. CT. No. 2 seed Jacksonville State (23-7, 12-4 OVC) will take on the winner of the Murray State/SEMO match on Friday at 6 p.m. CT, while top seed and host Morehead State (21-9, 14-2 OVC) will play the winner of the APSU/EKU match on Friday at 3:30 p.m. CT. The championship match will be played on Saturday at noon CT.
Against Eastern Illinois (9-23, 6-10 OVC), sophomore outside hitter Paige Sun led all hitters with 12 kills. Freshman middle blocker Katie Kemezys, junior outside hitter Kimberly Bunnage and junior middle blocker Danielle Sutterer each slammed nine kills.
Bunnage had a match-high 13 kills for the Racers, while junior defensive specialist Casandra Ersel added 11.
Sophomore setter Nikki Wong had the only double-double of the match, with a match-high 48 assists and 11 digs. Wong also had a co-match-high three blocks.
MSU hit .391 for the match, led by Bunnage, who hit .615 with one error in 13 attacks; freshman outside hitter Lilli Zhan, who hit .583 with one error in 12 attacks; and Sutterer, who hit .500 with two errors in 14 attacks. Freshman outside hitter Holly Jansen had six kills in seven attacks for an .857 percentage, while freshman outside hitter Allie Hunt had two kills in four attacks for a .500 percentage.
Eastern Illinois was led by Erica Gerth's eight kills and eight digs. Megan Kennedy added seven kills, while Kara Sorenson had six with three blocks. Leanne Kreps had a team-high 21 assists to go with a co-team-high eight digs.
"We played well, although we started off a little slow," Schwepker said. "Our blocking was a little weak, so our defense was down, but we were able to come back and straighten those things out. We had a lot of players contribute today, and that speaks well for this team."
