Sept. 9, 2010
ATLANTA – The Georgia Tech Volleyball team (3-3) will head to Athens, Ga., today to participate in the Bulldog Invitational this weekend. The Yellow Jackets will face Florida Gulf Coast (2-6) at 4:30 p.m. on Friday and then take on No. 9 Washington (5-0) and Georgia (6-1) at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m., respectively on Saturday.
All matches will be played at the Ramsey Student Center on the UGA campus and admission is free. Live stats for all three Tech games will be available at RamblinWreck.com, while both of Saturday’s matches will be broadcast on WREK, 91.1 FM in Atlanta and online at RamblinWreck.com.
Series History: This will be the first all-time meeting between Georgia Tech and both Florida Gulf Coast and Washington. The Yellow Jackets are 11-21 all-time against Georgia, but have won four straight matches and 11 out of the last 12. Last season, Tonya Johnson began her head coaching career in style as Tech beat UGA in a five-set thriller in front of a sold-out O’Keefe Gym. In her first career match, then-freshman Monique Mead had 20 kills and 10 digs.
Tippins Seeing Double: It took until Oct. 4, 2009 for senior setter Mary Ashley Tippins to record her first career double-double, but since then it has become a regular occurrence. After finishing second on the team with five double-doubles last season, the Atlanta native has four already this season. That includes all three matches last weekend at the KSU Varney’s Invitational. Tippins currently ranks seventh in the ACC averaging 9.41 assists per set and is 10th with 0.32 service aces a set.
Mead Picks Right Up
After a stellar freshman campaign which saw her earn honorable mention All-American honors and be named the ACC Freshman of the Year, sophomore right-side hitter Monique Mead has not missed a beat in 2010. Mead is second in the league with 4.18 kills per set and has recorded at least 10 in all but one match. Mead has had two 20-plus kill performances already this season, including a career-high 23 against Loyola Marymount on Sept. 3. That is the second-highest individual performance in the ACC so far this season.
Can You Dig It? In the Aug. 28 match against Alabama A&M, senior libero Jordan McCullers recorded her 1,000th career dig. McCullers, who now has 1,058 in her career, ranks seventh in the ACC with 3.86 a set.
