Junior Amanda Carroll produced a double-double as the FGCU volleyball team (17-6, 7-1 A-SUN swept Stetson (3-17, 2-6 A-SUN) 3-0 (25-20, 25-14, 25-19) in Alico Arena on Saturday.
In doing so, the Eagles have now won eight straight matches and 22 straight sets. The latter is the second longest streak in the NCAA Division I era for FGCU since the 2007 team won 30 straight sets. The win also keeps the Eagles in a three-way tie atop the A-SUN standings with Kennesaw State and Jacksonville.
"The first set wasn't particularly clean," FGCU head coach Matt Botsford said. "We had a few too many errors and kept it pretty close. We couldn't get any easy points off them. Overall, though, I thought the response after set one was much closer to what we would have imagined and the direction we want to be playing."
Carroll, the A-SUN's leader in points, recorded a game-high 17 kills while hitting .400 and adding 11 digs, two assists, one solo block and one block assist. It was her 10th double-double of the season and the 36th of her career. She also now has double-digit kills in all but three matches this season. Already the program's all-time kills and points leader, Carroll had 35 attacks on Saturday to pass Brooke Youngquist Sweat (3,139, 2004-07) for most in a career. She now has 3,147.
Freshman Snowy Burnam finished second on the team with a season-high 12 kills while hitting .429, adding three digs and picking up her first match with double-digit kills since Oct. 6 against USC Upstate.
Redshirt freshman Ciara DeBell finished third on the team in kills with seven. DeBell had a breakout match by hitting .545 and tallying two more kills than she has the entire season so far.
Sophomore Daniele Serrano, who leads the A-SUN in hitting percentage, added six kills, a game-high three block assists and two digs.
"It was mainly just a bunch of fun," DeBell said of her breakout match. "I missed it. It was one of the first games where I've been able to stay in. I started the third set, and stayed in the whole game. It gave me a flashback of last year."
Junior Maggie Rick, meanwhile was a big reason for the 53 kills and .353 hitting percentage that FGCU produced as a team. The junior setter tallied 44 assists along with four digs, three kills and two block assists. Her assist total tied her output on Sept. 1 vs UCF for her fourth most in a match this year.
Defensively, junior Karissa Rhoades had a game-high 17 digs along with four assists. During the team's current winning streak, she has produced double digit digs in every match, and she's now averaging 20 digs per match against Stetson this year.
Senior Courtney Stephens added nine digs to finish third on the team. She now needs just 14 more to become the fifth player in program history to record 1,000 digs in her career.
On top of that, every player for FGCU recorded at least one dig, including freshmen Cortney VanLiew with five and Alayna Ryan with two and junior Sharonda Pickering with one.
"Our floor defense was great," Botsford said. "I thought it was a little more challenging than it should of been because I didn't think our net defense was very good. (Stetson) got through a lot of holes. I thought we were pretty sloppy up front and to get those dig numbers behind a block like that is a testament to the reads Karissa was making. Courtney Stephens the same way and, of course, Amanda always has great instincts back there."
Junior Kaitlan Krivdo also contributed to the win with four kills and three digs.
FGCU's defense held the Hatters to a .173 hitting percentage. Stetson is now 0-17 this year when losing that statistic. On the flip side, they've won every match when it's in their favor.
The Eagles are now 19-2 all-time against Stetson, including a 9-1 record at home. The Eagles have won nine straight in the series, including the past four in straight sets, and Saturday's win gives FGCU a season sweep of the Hatters.
The Eagles will now play four straight on the road beginning with next weekend's matches against North Florida on Friday at 7 p.m. and Jacksonville on Saturday at 6 p.m. After closing the road trip against NJIT and USC Upstate the following weekend, FGCU will finish the regular season at home on Nov. 10-11 against Lipscomb and Kennesaw State.
Saturday's match concluded alumni weekend for the FGCU volleyball program. There was a dinner with all the attending alumni on Friday evening and then on Saturday, there was an alumni match at 11 a.m. and a tailgate prior to the match. The alumni were also recognized and honored between the second and third sets of the win over Stetson.
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