WKU to play first ever series against Old Dominion

Western Kentucky University’s Kayland Jackson (15) celebrates with her teammates after getting a big kill in the set during their Jan. 31 match against Evansville.

WKU (16-0), (10-0, C-USA) will be playing their first series ever against Old Dominion (7-8), (4-6, C-USA) from March 26-27. This series will be WKU’s last of the season, with the C-USA volleyball tournament beginning next week.

The first serve will be 6 p.m. CST on Friday and 11:30 a.m. CST Saturday. Both matches will be played away at ODU.

These matches were originally scheduled for Feb. 14 and 15 but were postponed due to a positive COVID-19 case within the WKU volleyball program. The matches were rescheduled earlier this month.

“We’ll try this once again,” Coach Travis Hudson said Wednesday on a Zoom video call. “I think we were right on the verge of making this road trip once before and COVID had other plans. It’ll be our first trip ever, after 26 years doing this, it’s not many first trips ever for me.”

The Lady Toppers hold the C-USA East Division title after two back-to-back 3-0 sweeps this past weekend at Middle Tennessee.

“We’re looking forward to going down and trying to close this thing out with two more wins,” Hudson said.

Freshman middle hitter Shannon Keck said the team made adjustments coming out of Saturday’s match against the Blue Raiders and into Sunday’s match, and was able to come back better. 

“I think if we can take that same energy and keep getting better as we keep going, then we’ll be alright,” Keck said. 

Hudson said he would like to see the team play cleaner than in the MTSU series and continue serving the ball well.

“It’s not about doing anything new or improving on anything, it’s about doing the things that you are trained to do really well over and over and that’ll be the focus this weekend,” Hudson said.

Senior right side Kayland Jackson said she believes the team needs to be a little crisper and refined on their side of the net.

“We’ve been doing a good job of just breaking things down,” Jackson said. “We’ll break things down today in practice. We’ve been trying to go back to the fundamentals and make sure that we’re just ready to go for these upcoming matches.”

Both matches will be available to stream at CUSA.tv.

Volleyball beat reporter Cassady Lamb can be reached [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @lambp0p.