Tulane University
at Southern
Hurst Has Happy Homecoming As Volleyball Drops Southern 3-0
Nov 5, 2002 | Women's Volleyball
Nov. 5, 2002
BATON ROUGE, La. - Senior outside hitter Britney Hurst had a happy homecoming and the Green Wave assured themselves of a winning season as the Tulane University volleyball team defeated Southern University 3-0 Tuesday night at Seymour Gym.
Hurst, a native of Baton Rouge and a graduate of Southern Lab, led the Green Wave with 17 kills and eight digs. As a team, Tulane hit .386 with 53 kills and 14 errors in 101 swings, and held the Lady Jaguars to a .000 attack percentage with just 18 kills and 18 errors in 83 swings.
"We tried to get Britney as many swings as we could for her homecoming," head coach Betsy Becker said. "It was special for her to have the crowd here for her. It felt like the whole gym was cheering for her."
With the 30-14, 30-11, 30-17 win, Tulane's fourth straight, the Green Wave improves to 18-13 on the year and guarantees a winning season with three regular-season games left to play. After finishing 16-14 a year ago, the Green Wave also assures itself of their first back-to-back winning seasons since 1993-94. Southern, meanwhile, falls to 13-16.
"This is a tribute to the hard work of everyone on this squad as well as the assistant coaches," Becker added. "All of the players in this program bought into what we were trying to do as coaches, and now it's paying off. It was really fun tonight, and hopefully we can keep it up."
Hurst and sophomore middle blocker Deva Fowler were the only two Green Wave regulars to play all three games as every player on the Tulane roster saw action against the Lady Jags. Fowler finished second on the team with nine kills and eight digs, while pacing the team with a match-best three aces.
Reserves Iman Houston and Nitia Small made good use of their playing time, finishing with seven and five kills, respectively. Defensively, setter Kelli Dickson, libero Karlyn Daly and outside hitters Lindsey Norman and Masharika Prejean each tallied four digs.
"It was so much fun to watch all of our players tonight," Becker said. "No matter what combination of players we had in, we didn't skip a beat. We'll that kind of cohesion for the remainder of the season."
As a team, the Green Wave tallied 11 aces, including two by Norman and backup setter Ellen Matthews. Dickson paced the Green Wave with 23 assists in a little more than one game of action, and Matthews finished with a career-high 19.
LaShawntel Gardner led the Southern attack with five kills while Brandy Russell had four. Tanisha McGill paced the Lady Jaguars with seven digs.
The Green Wave returns to action on Saturday, Nov. 9 when they take on Conference USA foe Southern Miss at 7 p.m. at Fogelman Arena.
