Oct. 6, 2011

By Danielle Minch
Athletic Media Relations

FORT COLLINS, Colo.—The Colorado State Rams came out tough Thursday night, winning the first set (25-18) and never looked back, sweeping the Seattle Redhawks, 3-0 (25-18, 25-16, 25-14) in a non-conference matchup at Moby Arena.

In Set 1, the Rams finished with an impressive .591 hitting percentage. After being down 6-5 in Set 2, CSU took a 15-6 lead. With the serving of junior Megan Plourde, the Rams went on a 10-0 run, forcing two Seattle timeouts. SU finished at -0.129 in the set as the Rams cruised to a commanding 2-0 lead entering the intermission.  CSU then jumped out to a 4-0 start in Set 3 and controlled the remainder of the match to seal the victory.

“That was a great offense output by us.” Head Coach Tom Hilbert said. “We just did a lot of things well today and we blocked well. It didn’t show up as blocks because they were covering them, but we were able to slow them and frustrate them, and as a result they hit the ball out of bounds and that’s the result.”

The Rams finished with a season-high team hitting percentage of .507, keeping the Redhawks at .088.  The Rams’ hitting percentage ranked as the third-best in the Mountain West this year.  

Leading the pack was Brieon Paige who hit .800 (8-0-10) for the Rams. Megan Plourde (6-0-9) hit .667 and Tori Brummett hit .600 (7-1-10). Together, the trio had 21 kills in 29 attempts, finishing at .690.

Deedra Foss’s distribution played a huge part in the success of the Rams’ attackers. Foss notched 33 assists and also recorded five kills of her own on 6 attempts, hitting .667.

“It’s definitely a big boost for us and it makes us more confident in our play no matter who is on the other side of the net,” Deedra Foss said. “The passing was definitely great tonight. It allowed me to set not only the outsides, but also the right side and middles. It’s what we’ve been working on lately.”

“It was really a great day. Deedra did a really great job in distributing the ball around,” Hilbert said. “There were lots of people getting attempts, and kept them off balance. They had no answer for our middles. I was just really pleased with the way they played.”

CSU took over the third set early and gave some other players the chance to get on the court. Samantha Peters recorded two kills and one error on four attempts, finishing at .250. Kelsey Snider notched one kill on one attempt, finishing at 1.000.

With the win, Hilbert is looking forward to continuing conference play.

“I like the idea that we had a couple of big time hitting games before we go into Laramie. I’m very pleased.”

The Rams return to the court this Saturday, traveling to Laramie, Wyo., to take on rival Wyoming. The match is set to begin at 7 p.m. from UW’s UniWyo Sports Complex.