SEGUIN, Tex. – Unlike Allen Iverson, the Southwestern University women's volleyball team used a great practice session on Thursday to catapult itself into an outstanding team performance in a 3-0 victory over Texas Lutheran University on Friday evening.

"The team had one of those great days together from start to finish today," stated Southwestern head coach Don Flora. "And it showed on the court. Our program had an amazing practice on Thursday, and it transferred to live volleyball and competition today. We were very pleased with our balance and our complete effort from the entire team."

To say it was a complete team effort might be an understatement as the Pirates won the match with set scores of 25-22, 25-22, 25-20 to jump back into a tie with TLU for second place in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference standings, but Southwestern owns the head-to-head tiebreaker with Bulldogs by sweeping the two regular-season contests.

Southwestern (14-9, 10-3 SCAC) may have only had one player record double-digit kills in Emma White with 11, but there were nine total Pirates that recorded at least one kill.

White also finished the night with eight digs and one block assist for a well-balanced performance.

The first set saw both teams playing hard with neither being able to take full control as the defensive effort on both sides of the net was outstanding.

Christina Kuras was able to finish off the set with a kill to give the Pirates the 1-0 lead in set wins.

The second set saw Southwestern earn a five-point lead late in the stanza before the Bulldogs (23-7, 10-3 SCAC) came storming back to eventually take a brief lead before the Pirates righted the ship and got the set victory thanks to a kill by White and an attack error from TLU.

It looked as if TLU was going to extend the match to a fourth set when the Bulldogs led by three at 16-13, but Southwestern was not about to walk the plank as the Pirates went on a 12.2 run to close out the match.

White was on fire with four kills during the massive scoring run with Claire Romo assisting on three.

Romo eclipsed the prestigious 1,000-assist barrier for her career during the match that saw her finish with 16 on the night as well as scooping up nine digs.

Annika Flora added 12 assists to go along with six digs and two service aces.

Geneva Nedrow had an outstanding match from her libero position tallying a match-nest 23 digs.

"Seeing our passers and setters take care of their jobs at a very high-level made for an exceptional sense of offensive balance," added Coach Flora. "And as importantly, we put pressure on TLU in many facets of their offense this evening."

The victory was doubly important to earn the season sweep with TLU as there is just one week left in the regular season and the top two teams in the SCAC earning first round bye in the six-team event.

UP NEXT

Southwestern will return back to TLU's Memorial Gymnasium to close out the regular season next weekend with matched against Colorado College and Trinity University on Saturday, Oct. 29 as well as Schreiner University the following day. First up for the weekend will be Colorado College at 11 a.m. CDT on Saturday.