SAN DIEGO - It was an impressive start to the season Friday as the UC San Diego women's volleyball team upset Colorado Mesa in straight sets and went on to blank Concordia (Calif.) at Point Loma's Seaside Invitational.
Scores against Colorado Mesa at Golden Gymnasium were 25-23, 25-7 and 25-21. UCSD is unranked while CMU is 10th nationally among NCAA Division II teams.
The Tritons dominated on attack, finishing with a .314 hitting percentage on 42 kills and 10 errors in 102 attempts. The Mavericks hit just .081, collecting 30 kills while making 21 errors in 111 swings.
In her first match as a Triton, Meagan Wright led all players with 14 kills and 16 points. The junior San Diego native, who sat out last season after transferring from SF State, also added seven digs, three assists, two blocks and a service ace.
UCSD's senior trio of Kameron Cooper, Danielle Dahle and Heidi Sierks were solid. Sierks, a setter who totaled 21 double-doubles in 2014, notched her first of this season with 30 assists and 11 digs. She now has one in each of her last nine matches. An outside hitter, Dahle had nine kills, six digs and two aces while Cooper, a middle, hit .571 with eight kills an no errors. She also had a match-best four blocks.
Amanda Colla, who played outside for the Tritons last year, moved to libero and finished with a team-high 16 digs.
Three true freshmen made their debuts for the Tritons including Molly Dalziel, Kayla Evans and Morgan Kissick. Kissick had five kills, four digs and three blocks while Evans registered seven digs.
Colorado Mesa got six kills apiece from Hattie Gianinetti and Erin Perez. Kricket Adelman had a match-high 19 digs.
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Scores against Concordia were 25-13, 25-17 and 25-19. The Tritons moved to 2-0 while the Eagles fell to 1-1 as they had defeated SF State earlier in the day.
Once again, UC San Diego was superior on attack, out-hitting its opponent .268 (38-12-97) to .151 (35-19-106). The Tritons held an 8.0 to 4.0 advantage in blocks and had four aces to the Eagles' none.
Dahle and Wright combined for 20 kills with Dahle putting down a team-best 11. Wright led all Tritons with 13 digs. Cooper was potent for the second time as well, totaling eight kills while hitting .400.
Rebecca Seaberry had a match-high five blocks, while Colla had 12 digs and two aces. Sierks amassed 27 assists, but did not extend her double-double streak.
CUI saw Rachel Flynn tally a match-high 12 kills and Taylor Dennison had 18 digs to lead all players.
"We were serving tough and able to pass well enough to be in system for good stretches today," said sixth-year UCSD head coach Ricci Luyties. "If we can keep improving on that throughout the season, our offense will be tough to stop."
Saturday, UCSD takes on Regis University at 3:30 p.m. and closes out action at the Seaside Invitational against Point Loma at 8 p.m. Both matches will be covered by live stats and pay-per-view live video.
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