Temple University volleyball (5-14, 1-7 The American Athletic Conference) fell 3-0 against the University of Central Florida (14-6, 7-1 The American) Sunday afternoon.
The Owls came out sloppy in the first set, where the Knights won 25-9 and forced errors against the Owls’ defense. The Owls put more pressure on the Knights’ defense in the second set, but were still slow on the attack, losing 25-14. The Owls’ best performance came in the third set, where they forced errors against the Knights before ultimately falling 25-23.
The Knights’ aggressive play near the net put pressure on the Owls’ offense, forcing them out of their system.
Knights’ senior outside hitter Mckenna Melville dominated Temple’s defense with 18 kills.
“[Melville] is an All-American, and today you saw why,” said head coach Bakeer Ganesharatnam. “She’s a really good player. It’s very hard to slow her down. We tried the best we could, and unfortunately, it took us all the way to the third set.”
The Owls rotated players around for the match because junior outside hitter Gem Grimshaw was out with an undisclosed minor injury.
Graduate students outside hitters Miray Bolukbasi and Katerina Papazoglu split the court to help with combating the Knights aggression on the serve. Bolukbasi finished with 10 kills and Papazoglou had three.
“In a situation like this when you’re down two nothing, against a really good team, you just need to compete,” Ganesharatnam said. “It doesn’t really matter who’s really playing, you just need people who are not afraid and go out and want to put up a fight.”
Temple will look for its second conference win of the season against the University of Tulsa (9-7, 4-3 The American) on Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. in McGonigle Hall.
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