FULTON, Mo. - William Woods University (14-10, 2-2 American Midwest Conference) continued its domination against Central Baptist College (2-6, 2-1), sweeping the Mustangs 25-11, 25-14, 25-11 to move to .500 in the AMC Thursday at Anderson Arena.
"Last week didn't go quite as we had planned it to," William Woods volleyball coach
Kandace Cook said. "Of course, we knew that Columbia would be a hard game. We knew that Stephens had beat us last year. We had a little bit of redemption. We wanted to go in there and take care of them. Things don't always go as planned, and I think this week allowed us to reset and have a new focus on what we wanted to do and what we wanted from our season. So, to come in here this week and take care of business like we needed to and make it to .500 now, feels great. Now we just got to keep growing and keep building from here, that we take care of our conference opponents and even our noncon; we still want to make sure that we're being as productive as we can in our season. And, pushing our record to be greater and pushing to win conference."Â
En route to a resounding victory, the Owls tallied a set hitting percentage of at least .393, while CBC had no greater than .185. WWU led in every statistical category - hitting percentage (.460-.036), kills (45-22), aces (7-2), blocks (9-1), assists (40-21) and digs (40-32).
While the Owls had standout performances from starters to rotation players, a few that did exceptionally well were
Pamela Durazo (match-high 12 kills and .750 hitting percentage),
Juliana Neves (career-high five aces, added 11 assists) and
Vitoria Campos Mello (11 kills and nine digs).
Unlike recent games, Woods avoided a slow start, taking an early six-point lead (10-4) in the first set thanks to its 6-0 run.
Audra Gray notched three assists during that stretch, two on
Reanna Dodge's kills. Following that scoring surge, the Mustangs called timeout before WWU went on a 9-3 run to go in front by 12 points, with four Owls posting a kill each. CBC couldn't overcome the double-digit deficit, with the last of its eight errors in the set handing Woods a 14-point set-one victory.
In set two, the Owls put up their best offensive numbers, recording 17 kills with a superb .516 hitting percentage compared to the Mustangs' eight kills with a .185 hitting percentage. Woods registered the first four points of the set, three coming from Campos Mello kills provided by Treis, who also assisted a Durazo kill in that run. Since CBC had its best hitting percentage, WWU took until the latter stages of the set to go ahead by double digits. Commanding the court, the Owls tallied the set's final five points, with Treis posting three of her eight assists and
Marissa Solverud one of her three kills and her block in the set.
Finishing off the sweep, William Woods took advantage of Central Baptist recording its second of two eight-error sets - the Owls only had two errors in set three. Neves had a tremendous third set, serving three aces and providing six assists. And so did Durazo, showing she's a Swiss Army knife with five kills, three blocks and an assist on Solverud's match-set point kill. Right after coming off the bench,
Roberta Carlos de Silva pulled down the dig that led to Solverud calling game.
"I think Roberta on that last point where she risked it to go for the ball behind her and threw her arm up to save the ball, and we were able to execute a point off of it," Cook said. "I think that was a real big moment where she wanted to show that she could be on that court and she could do her job. I thought that the girls rallied around her. You saw them shoving her, so excited. I think that's one of the best things about our team is that we want it for each other. So when somebody else gets to have that role or gets the opportunity to step on that court and do a bigger job than they normally do, it's exciting that we should be lifting each other up. It's something that we're building our whole program about."
Thursday's straight-set triumph was the first of three consecutive matchdays with five total contests for William Woods. The Owls head to Palos Heights, Ill., for the Trinity Christian Invitational, with Day 1 matchups against the University of St. Francis (12-9) at 4 p.m. and Madonna (4-10) at 6 p.m. Friday at DeVos Gymnasium.
"We know going into the weekend, our first game might be our hardest game," Cook said. "It's gonna look a little different because we don't have Ren (
Lauren Adams). She's still injured right now, and I think that everybody else is gonna step up. I think we saw some of that this week; we saw people stepping up in other ways. So that, especially if we want them on the court with us, that they need to get healthy, and we can do the job in other places. That we can still do our job as a team. We're excited for it. Lots of noncon play, but then we have about a week off, so give our bodies a little bit of rest, but we're going in there strong. Tomorrow, we want to come out with a great week of being 6-0 - that's the goal."
