Lauren RabainoThe No. 24 Cal Poly volleyball team will travel to Cal State Northridge today for its second match against the Matadors and will follow up with its second match with Long Beach State on Saturday.
The 49ers, who haven’t lost a match since being swept by Cal Poly on Sept. 21, will square off against a 2-5 UC Santa Barbara team tonight. Both the 49ers and the Mustangs have posted 12 wins in their overall schedules so far this season and they currently share first place in the Big West Conference with 6-1 records.
Long Beach State is hitting .263 on the attack, averaging 16.2 kills per game.
The 49ers are led by senior middle blocker Alexis Crimes, who is hitting .325 with 4.57 kills per game. Defensively at the net, Crimes also posted 79 total blocks, 16 of which have been on serves.
Crimes is backed by junior outside hitter Quincy Verdin, who has 197 kills this season, freshman outside hitter Ashley Lee, who has 155 and senior middle blocker Michaela Hasalikova, who has 144 as well as a .312 hitting percentage.
Going into tonight’s matchup, Cal Poly is led by junior middle blocker Jaclyn Houston. Houston, who earned Big West Conference Player of the Week honors earlier in the week, leads the Big West Conference with a .395 hitting percentage.
Houston also leads the Big West with 1.46 blocks per game.
Junior outside hitter Kylie Atherstone, who has earned Big West Conference Player of the Week honors three times this season, continues to be potent on the attack.
Atherstone leads the Mustangs in kills with 301 and is fourth in the Big West with an average of 4.36 per game.
Senior libero Kristin Jackson has posted 362 digs so far this season and is another 109 away from joining only 24 other players in NCAA Division I history to surpass the 2,000 dig mark. She is averaging 5.25 per game.
The Matadors, however, have struggled with hitting.
Junior middle blocker Val Kepler leads the team hitting .307 while producing an average of 2.33 kills per game.
Defensively the Matadors are averaging 2.44 blocks per game. Lynda Morales leads the team with 91 total blocks, 87 of which are off attacks. Kepler has chipped in 78 blocks.
The Matadors fell to 4-4 Saturday with a loss at Pacific and are a half-match behind fourth-place Cal State Fullerton.
Both tonight’s and tomorrow’s games will start at 7 p.m.
Saturday’s game against Long Beach State will be replayed on College Sports Television on Oct. 22.