MOBILE, Ala. — Not every volleyball match will go the way the Texas State coaching staff would like, but Saturday's five-set match at South Alabama provided many positive things despite the outcome.
The first — a rather
large positive — came during the late stages of the third set. Texas State was looking to respond to a Kailey Keeble skip-set kill and the
Emily DeWalt and
Janell Fitzgerald connection took over. Fitzgerald and DeWalt linked up for three consecutive points, but it was the last of the trio that provided
the moment.
After each team sent the volleyball over the net on several occasions, Fitzgerald was able to take a DeWalt set and send it off a South Alabama defender at the right angle to send it downwards for a Bobcat kill. The play resulted in DeWalt being credited with her 5,693rd career assist, passing Leslie Clark (Middle Tennessee State, 2006-09) for the Sun Belt Conference's career assist record.
A second positive Texas State volleyball head coach
Sean Huiet took from the match was the defensive play of the team's sophomore libero,
Jacqueline Lee, who finished with a career-high 32 digs. Lee's performance came less than 20 hours after she was credited with a then-career-high 23 digs in the Bobcats' four-set win Friday night.
Lee was one of three Bobcat student-athletes to finish with double-figure digs — Fitzgerald (17) and
Lauren Teske (14) — as Texas State turned in a season-high 89 digs as a team, while holding all-conference performance Hannah Maddux to just a .218 attack percentage. By the end of the five-set match, only six of 12 Jaguar student-athletes who saw match time had at least one kill against the Bobcat defense.
A third positive?
Janell Fitzgerald posting a season-high 28 kills on a .317 attack percentage to cap a weekend that featured 54 kills, 6.00 kills per set and a .339 attack percentage against one of the top defensive units in the Sun Belt Conference.
FROM HEAD COACH SEAN HUIET
"It's frustrating in the sense that we didn't play great — and nothing against South Alabama, that's a great, great team — but we were just really high-aired and some of that was due to the blocking they were doing to us. But we had 35 attack errors and seven blocking errors, and I just felt like we started to let the intensity of the match overtake us. I thought if we could have calmed down there a little towards the end, maybe it's a different outcome. But to be on the road, not playing our best and the match being in five with us having chances, we'll take some positives out of this. A split this weekend is still good for us, because we still control a lot of our destiny."
STAT LEADERS
SCORES BY SET
- 1st | Texas State 25, South Alabama 21
- 2nd | South Alabama 25, Texas State 20
- 3rd | Texas State 25, South Alabama 22
- 4th | South Alabama 25, Texas State 21
- 5th | South Alabama 15, Texas State 7
MATCH NOTES
- Jacqueline Lee became the first student-athlete under third-year head coach Sean Huiet to finish a match — regardless of the number of sets played — with 30-or-more digs after finishing Saturday afternoon's match with a career-high 32. The previous high was 26 by Brooke Johnson in a four-set match against Louisiana on Oct. 2, 2021.
- Lee's 32 were just five shy of tying Sierra Smith for the program's single-match record. Smith, at UTA on Oct. 9, 2013, finished a five-set match against the Mavericks with 37 digs.
- Lauren Teske extended her consecutive matches played with a double-double streak to five in a row following a 13-kill, 14-dig performance against the Jaguars.
- Teske will enter next weekend's home matches against Arkansas State one back of tying Janell Fitzgerald's six straight from Oct. 29, 2021 to Nov. 13, 2021 as the longest by a Bobcat outside hitter over the last two seasons.
- By finishing Saturday's action with a season-high 28 kills, Janell Fitzgerald has now finished the last three consecutive Texas State volleyball matches with 25-or-more kills.
- The streak is the longest by any Bobcat student-athlete under third-year head coach Sean Huiet.
- Texas State now has five matches with a student-athlete recording 20-or-more kills with Janell Fitzgerald having four of them.
- Fitzgerald's 28 kills against the Jaguars were just two shy of tying her career high (30) set at Arkansas State on Nov. 7, 2020.
- Despite Saturday's outcome, Texas State still has the most overall wins (16) by any team in the Sun Belt Conference.
UP NEXT
- Having earned a split at South Alabama and still maintaining the top spot in the Sun Belt's West Division, Texas State (16-6, 8-2) now return back to the Lonestar State for a four-match homestand that'll begin on Friday, Oct. 28, when the Bobcats host Arkansas State (5-17, 0-10) at 6 p.m. CT. The Red Wolves are coming off back-to-back losses at Southern Miss over the weekend and have lost 16 consecutive matches since last winning on Saturday, Sept. 3 in a four-set match at UT Martin.
FOLLOW US
- For the latest information on the team, follow @TexasStateVball on Twitter, @TxStateVolleyball on Instagram and Facebook. General athletic news can also be at @TxStateBobcats on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
