Nov. 14, 2002
The No. 23 Georgia Tech volleyball team (26-5, 11-3 Atlantic Coast Conference) closes out its 2002 conference schedule with matches at home this weekend in O’Keefe Gymnasium. The Yellow Jackets will face Wake Forest (13-15, 6-8 ACC) Friday at 6:30 p.m. followed by a meeting with Duke (22-7, 10-4 ACC) Saturday at 7 p.m.
Tech enters its final weekend of the regular season in second place in the ACC, two matches behind No. 12 North Carolina and one match ahead of Duke in the standings.
In their meeting in Winston-Salem this season, the Yellow Jackets defeated the Demon Deacons in four games, 30-27, 30-26, 28-30, 30-25. As a team, Tech hit .287 and was led by Lauren Sauer, who had 21 kills and hit .436 and Jayme Gergen who had 11 kills and eight block assists. Kele Eveland dished out 56 assists and had a match-high 11 digs. The Yellow Jackets’ played solid defense, recording 15 blocks in the match and recording 56 digs.
“Wake is a young team and they have a quick offense,” said head coach Bond Shymansky. “I felt like we sneaked by them earlier this year, but at the same time, that was in their gym and we are a different team in O’Keefe.”
The meeting with Duke marks the 40th time the two teams have met, with the Blue Devils holding the edge, 28-11. Duke has won the last four meetings against Tech, including a 23-30, 30-20, 27-30, 30-22, 15-9 victory in October. In that match, the Jackets hit a season-low .092 as not one individual player hit above .200. One bright spot was the defensive play of Keight Vincent who recorded a career-high 26 digs in the match. The match will be broadcast like on WREK radio (91.1 FM) and can also be heard in streaming audio over the internet at www.wrek.org.
“Duke is a match where our team is motivated by revenge,” said Shymansky. “They’ve beaten us in our last four meetings and we have something different to show them with our lineup when we play them Saturday. I know that our players are really hungry to make good on their failure to execute the last time we faced them.”
The Jackets continue to be led by all-America candidate Lynnette Moster, who leads the team with 473 kills and is the only player in the league to be ranked in the top 10 in kills per game (5.09), digs per game (3.17), hitting percentage (.338), and service aces per game(0.37). In addition, Kele Eveland runs an offense which is atop the conference in kills per game (16.45), assists per game (15.15) and hitting percentage (.285).
“The most important thing for us is that we’re working really hard to be sharp and to be our very best at this point of the season, because we feel like our best is as good or better than anyone else in the conference,” said Shymansky. “Our team feels very confident playing at home and we expect to have the success this weekend that we always do in O’Keefe Gym.”
