LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Bellarmine University volleyball team rebounded from its Thursday night loss to Butler in a big way, taking down the Bulldogs in straight sets to win 25-18, 25-17, 25-23 on Saturday afternoon in Knights Hall.
With the win, Bellarmine moves back to .500 on the season at 4-4 while the loss drops Butler to 6-3 on the year.
Freshman
Mady Yaden once again led the Knights, racking up a match-high 18 kills while hitting .469 (18-3-32), adding two blocks and a dig. Redshirt sophomore
Mya White was second on the team with 9 kills, hitting .318 (9-2-22) on the match with three digs. Senior
Erika Smith rounded out the top hitters with eight kills on a .583 (8-1-12) clip with a block and a dig. Freshman
Maddie Carnes paced the offense with 34 assists while contributing five digs, two kills and an ace. Junior
Payton Parsons and freshman
Ava Long tied for the team lead with eight digs each.
As a team, Bellarmine topped Butler in kills (45-36), assists (39-36), aces (4-0) and digs (41-36). After recording a combined 48 attack and service errors against Butler on Thursday, BU cut that number down to just 21 (18 attack, 3 service) errors in today's match.
After falling 3-1 just a couple of days ago, the Knights came out ready to play today. Bellarmine jumped out to an early lead in the first and kept pushing the pace the whole set. Butler closed the gap to three a few times before finally tying things at 16-16. From there, the Knights made a final surge to take the set 25-18. The second was a tight race in the beginning. Bellarmine vaulted into the lead as the media timeout loomed, going on a 6-1 run to go up 15-10. From there, Butler battled but couldn't overcome the deficit as Bellarmine went up 2-0 with a 25-17 set two win. In the third, the Knights once again jumped out to a sizeable lead, scoring eight straight points to go up 8-1. The Bulldogs battled back though, tying the stanza at 14-14. It was a back-and-forth affair from there with neither team able to create much separation. Still tied at 20-20, Bellarmine made one final push and eventually sealed the sweep with a 25-23 win.
Up next, Bellarmine will close out its non-conference schedule with one final multi-team event, playing Norfolk State, Chattanooga and Radford in the Radford Invitational next weekend, September 18-19.
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