Temple Volleyball Falls to UCF on the Road

Friday, October 3

Orlando, Fla.

7:00 PM

Temple University

10-5, 1-2AAC

UCF

10-5, 3-0AAC

Temple

UCF

Jennifer Iacobini

Photo by: Mitchell Leff

Temple Volleyball Falls to UCF on the Road

10.3.14 | Women's Volleyball

Box Score

Box Score

ORLANDO, Fla. – Temple volleyball dropped an American Athletic Conference match-up at UCF on Friday, falling to the Knights in three sets, 25-17, 25-17, and 25-16. The Owls (10-5, 1-2) suffered from early hitting woes, and had no answer for the American's top offensive team.

"I thought we did a good job today serving," said Temple head coach Bakeer Ganes. "Our serve-receive was good, but as the match went on, [UCF] did a good job putting pressure on our passers, keeping us out of our offense, and not giving us high percentage attacks."

Temple hit a combined .100 in the match, while UCF hit .327 as a team, including hitting over a .400 clip in the second and third sets. Dara Peric led all Owls with six kills, while Jennifer Iacobini added five. Alyssa Drachslin picked up a team-high 14 digs and Sandra Sydlik recorded 24 assists and 11 digs.

The Owls struggled offensively in set one, hitting just -.048. The match stayed close, however, as Temple kept UCF within two points until midway through the stanza. Leading 14-12, UCF went on a 6-1 run, which included four Owl attack errors to make it 20-13. Temple got no closer than seven points for the rest of the match, as the hosts closed out the set with a 25-17 win.

The Owls owned the early edge in set two, taking the lead from the start and increasing the advantage to four on a Tyler Davis kill to make it 14-10. Down by four, UCF then rattled off four straight points to make tie the match at 14-14. Like the first set, the Knights closed it out with a commanding run, scoring 11 of the set's final 14 points to notch a 25-17 win, earning a 2-0 match lead.

"That's something we talked about, if you're up by five points, you can't allow them to get back," added Ganes. "UCF had seven or eight unanswered points late in the set, and that's just too big of a run to give up, especially against a team of this caliber."

Temple was up 3-2 early in the first set, but the lead was short-lived as UCF took control of the match at 5-4 and never looked back. The Knights closed out the sweep a 25-16 set three victory.

"Overall, we didn't play a very good match, but we didn't play an awful match. We improved from our last loss [against UConn]. The team did a good job executing comebacks, even though the score differential didn't end in our favor. The focus this year has been to get better in every match, and although it ended in a loss, I did see improvements."

Temple returns to the court on Sunday, with another American clash in Florida. The Owls will play at USF at 12:00 p.m.