Volleyball Loses to No. 17 Rice

Friday, November 8

Houston, Texas

7 p.m.

Florida Atlantic

13-9, 7-4

Rice

22-1, 11-0

Florida Atlantic

Rice

Photo by: JC Ridley/Owlpix.com

11/9/2019 12:51:00 AM | Women's Volleyball

Box Score

HOUSTON, TEXAS - The Florida Atlantic University suffered its second setback in a row, losing to No. 17 Rice in straight sets (25-23, 25-19, 25-13) on Friday night. FAU Owls fell to 13-9 overall and 7-4 in Conference USA.

Key Plays
With the score tied at 3 early in the first set, FAU went on a 10-4 run that included two Cailea Gibbs kills, two Zuri Smith blocks (one solo, one a tandem block with Sydney Nemtuda) and a Jordan Yauch service ace to go up 13-7. Rice (22-1, 11-0) fought back to level the sides at 14. There were five more ties before a modest scoring spurt gave FAU a 22-20 lead late. Rice answered by taking five of the next six points to come back and win the frame 25-23.

Set number two also featured FAU taking a decent early lead, 12-8. The Texas version of the Owls once again rallied and pulled ahead 17-14. Gibbs teamed up with Kennedy Muckelroy and Massiel Matos on back-to-back blocks to trim the deficit to one, but Rice won the next five points, and eventually took the set 25-19.

In the third set, Rice seized control with an early 7-2 run and won going away to complete the sweep.

Notables

Zuri Smith continued her strong defensive play as of late, putting down seven total blocks to go along with six kills
Smith is three solo blocks away from reaching 10^th place on the FAU single-season list
Cailea Gibbs, Massiel Matos and Sydney Nemtuda each had five kills
Matos and Kori Varney had nine digs each for FAU

What's Next
FAU wraps up its home schedule against Marshall at noon on Sunday. Sunday will be Senior Day and the Owls will recognize their seven seniors before the match. Live stats and video will be available at fausports.com. In-game updates will be available at twitter.com/FAUVolleyball.