Tulane Faces UAB In Conference USA Volleyball Quarterfinals Friday
Nov 17, 2006 | Women's Volleyball
Nov. 17, 2006
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Houston, Texas - The Tulane volleyball team enters the Conference USA Championship with its first-ever bye and its highest conference finish ever at 11-5. Tulane faces the fifth-seeded UAB Blazers, who defeated UCF, 3-1, on Thursday in the First Round. The Green Wave (15-10 overall) closed the regular season with four straight wins and will look to push its season's longest win streak to five and advance to the semifinals for the second-straight year.
Tulane takes on No. 5 seed UAB, a team riding a 10-match winning streak. Tulane fell to UAB at home, 3-2, on October 27. Tulane is looking for its third quarterfinal victory in the C-USA tournament.
Tulane's Top Season
Tulane finished Conference USA play with its highest win total ever at 11-5. The Green Wave finished 9-4 in both 2002 and 2003. Tulane earned a first-round bye in the C-USA Tournament for the first time in school history. Overall, Tulane's no stranger to 15 win seasons, having turned in six over the last seven years and 26 in 32 seasons of volleyball.
Natural Born Killer
With 5.41 kills per game, sophomore Sara Radosevic ranks sixth in Division I kills. The First-Team All-Conference USA outside hitter from Zagreb, Croatia, now has 465 kills in 86 games. Radosevic is second in C-USA, as conference mate Kelly-Anne Billingy of Marshall leads the nation. She is also 30th in the NCAA and second in C-USA with 0.56 service aces per game.
Big Game
Sara Radosevic set Tulane's record for most kills in a four-game match with 32 kills against UTEP in the regular season finale. She now owns four of the top single-match kill marks in Tulane history (any number of games). She racked up 31 vs UNO on August 26. Radosevic is one of just four Conference USA players to post 30-kill matches this season, Marshall's Kelly-Ann Billingy, Houston's Justine Farmer and Rachel Giubilato of SMU are the others.
Linder Keeps Slugging
All-Conference USA Second Team member Jen Linder, a sophomore middle blocker, leads Conference USA with a .431 hitting percentage (189 kills on 339 attempts). Earlier in the year, she was among the NCAA leaders in hitting percentage, ranking as high as 14th. She was 18th before an injury limited her to just one attempt at Tulsa -- naturally, that attempt hit the floor for a kill -- and she is now 13 attempts shy of qualifying for the NCAA leader board (minimum is 4.0 attempts per game). A .431 hitting percentage would rank sixth nationally and adding 13 attempts to Linder's total would lower her hitting percentage .427, good for ninth in the NCAA.
Freshman Digs Leader
With 487 digs on the season, freshman libero Jenn Miller is the sixth Tulane volleyball player to rack up 400-plus digs in a single season. The Second Team All-CUSA and C-USA All-Freshman Team pick owns the freshman record for digs in a season, and is just seven digs back of tying Karlyn Daly's single-season record with 494 in 2003.
Ksen-sational
C-USA Freshman of the Year Ksenija Vlaskovic has closed the regular season with a vengence, With two double-double performances against UTEP last weekend, Vlaskovic posted 34 kills with a .408 hiting percentage and 25 digs in her last two matches. In her last four matches she is hitting .386 with 62 kills and just 11 errors. For the season, she has nine double-doubles and is ninth in Conference USA with 3.72 kills per game.
Turnaround is Fair Play
With 15 wins entering the C-USA tournament, Tulane tied its school record for largest improvement in win totals from one season to the next. Last season -- amid extraodinary circumstances following Hurricane Katrina -- Tulane finished with five wins. The 1985 Green Wave squad won 28 matches after finished with 18 wins the year before under head coach Kathy Trosclair.
Young, But Experienced
With three freshman, seven sophomores and only one senior (Sara Thorson), Tulane is one of just six teams in Division I with one upperclassman or less, along with Alabama St. (one junior), Birmingham-Southern (one senior), Indiana St. (no juniors or seniors), Savannah St. (one junior), and Southern (one senior). Tulane is the only program of that group with a winning record this season, as the other five are a combined 27-110 on the season entering this weekend.
On Tap
The winner of today's match advances to the semifinals to face the winner of the first quarterfinal match: No. 1 seed Tulsa vs No. 8 seed SMU. Match time will be at 6 p.m., with the Conference USA Final on Sunday at 5 p.m. on CSTV. The C-USA Tournament champion earns an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, which begins Nov. 30 at campus sites.
