Aug. 25, 2007

Box Score

AUBURN, Ala. - Early on, the Colonels volleyball team looked like the squad playing in the bigger conference, jumping out to a 5-1 lead over the Auburn Tigers. But soon the SEC-power began to dominate the Colonels and cruised to a three-set victory (30-22, 30-16, 30-18) in day two of the War Eagle Invitational. The Tigers improve to 2-0 on the year while Nicholls falls to 0-2.

The Colonels only had one set, the third, in which the team had a positive hitting percentage. In the second set alone, team had 11 errors while only having six kills in the entire set. Nicholls would continue to keep a two to three point lead over the Tigers in the first set, until the tide shifted and Auburn took the lead and only relinquished it once for the rest of the match.

In the second and third sets, head coach Chris Laird switched up the lineup a couple of times, putting in Ivanina Ivanova, Chelsey Adams and Elise King in the rotation. However of the three sets, the Colonels were only able to score over twenty points in the first set, only scoring 16 and 18 points in the final two games.

Aaliyah Muhammad and Rachel Spreen both had six kills each for Nicholls, with Muhammad being the only player with over 10 total attempts to have a positive hitting percentage. Rachel Shanks led the way for Auburn with 10 kills with two aces and three digs followed by Jacob Whitney who had a .692 hitting percentage for the entire match with nine kills.

Nicholls' final game of the War Eagle Invitational will be at 4 p.m. against Troy University and can be followed using GameTracker at geauxcolonels.com.