JBU volleyball earns sweep on senior night

In a swift 65 minute match, the John Brown University volleyball team swept past Central Christian (Kan.) in straight sets (25-11, 25-7, 25-13) on Friday night inside Bill George Arena.

The Golden Eagles (24-7, 15-4 Sooner Athletic) rode 11 Carly McKinney terminations and 10 services aces to its 18th sweep of the season, holding the visiting Tigers to a .042 (16-13-71) attack effort.

McKinney and freshman Lauren Cloud each served up three aces to power the John Brown service effort that accompanied a .464 (46-7-84) attack effort. Middles Jessica Schultz and Lindsey Clark contributed eight kills in the win.

Adding to her match-high 11 kills, McKinney nearly secured the double-double with nine digs while freshman Jillian Blackman posted her second double-digit dig performance in three matches.

"I'm proud of our team's level of play this evening as we honored our senior players as well as continued to build momentum for the postseason," said head coach Ken Carver. "Our goal this evening was to be efficient and effective in terms of being aggressive with our serve location and then from the offensive standpoint be able to put down balls on first or second swing and not allow rallies to continue. I felt we executed very well on both of those fronts. We missed a few too many serves in the first set but finished with six more aces after that with only two more errors from the service line.

"Morgan and Lauren did an excellent job in running our offense in terms of variety of plays as well as being balanced in their set distribution. Our back-row players passed at a high level which allowed our setters to run the tempo and variety of offense we desire. All of our front-row players did a good job of taking smart swings and attacking areas of the court we knew (Central Christian) would have a hard time defending. Tonight was just a good example of our team's ability to focus and to go out execute our game plan."

Freshman Morgan Fincham passed out 20 assists, her sixth 20-helper match of the season, while freshman Lauren Cloud added 17.

Carver added, "I was proud of the way all of our seniors played in the match. Senior night is always an emotional night, but everyone was able to embrace and enjoy the time we took prior to the match starting to honor this special group of young women and then flip the switch to go out and secure another sweep for our team on the season."

Sports on 11/10/2019