Two Blazers hit milestones this weekend at Carolina Clash
Posted on Sep 11, 2012 in Sports
A couple of Blazers hit career milestones in the Carolina Clash this past weekend. The Green and Gold ladies finished the Carolina Clash against Clemson and South Carolina in their final matches of the tournament.
Kiriana Hirini executes one of the 16 blocks for the UAB on their path on Georgia State. Kyle Thompson/Staff Photographer
For Friday’s first game of the set, The Blazers had notched up one win against Winthrop, in which setter Alison Woods recorded her 3,000 assist to become just the fourth Blazer to do so, 3-0 and evened out the score with an unfortunate 3-1 loss against South Carolina early Saturday, in the loss Sam Serley took the spotlight in the wake of the inclement damage with her 19 kills out of an attempted 24 which gave her 1,000 kills to her career name.
The loss to South Carolina ended a four match winning streak the Ladies in Green had put together since getting off to a 1-4 start.
The Blazer hype intense as the team took the first set at a close 25-23.
But the next match proved a fault to UAB and the team walked away 1-1 so far for the weekend.
It was Clemson that gave the final blow in the Blazer attempt to take back the court late Saturday.
The game saw three Clemson players with 10 plus kills each. In an attempt to match the Tigers, UAB rocketed eight kills via Aly Slaughter, and Serley was right behind with seven, but the Green and Gold never caught up with the Tigers in aggression level.
Whether it was the court away from home or the pressure of two intense teams (South Carolina with a perfect 10 season so far), the Blazers know that dwelling on the 2-1 weekend losses will keep their attitude away from where it needs to be.
All of this came after UAB opened its home schedule on Tuesday against Georgia State. “Our goal coming into tonight was to get our offense going and we wanted to own the net and I think the kids did a great job of that,” head coach Kerry Messersmith said. UAB took down the Panthers three sets to one. Own the net they did coming up with 16 blocks to aid in the win.
“Offensively we are doing much better than we did two weekends ago,” Messersmith said. “The match earlier today against South Carolina really could have gone either way. I think we are making progress every day. We just have to get everyone on the same page.”
The team will have a week to get themselves back in check and put their energy into focusing on taking down Bowling Green in next week’s Purdue Active Ankle Challenge as Kerry Messersmith’s team will look to get back on the right side of .500.
David McCaw
Senior Staff Writer
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