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Lori Baird hit a school record .923 in helping Utah beat Missouri State in three.
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Sept. 9, 2006
SALT LAKE CITY - Nobody's perfect but Lori Baird was close as she led the University of Utah volleyball team (6-2 overall) to its fourth straight win. Utah topped the Missouri State Bears, 3-0, here in the final match of the Utah Classic this afternoon.
Utah hit a smooth .383 for the match but that was buoyed by the efforts of Baird. She set Utah's single-match record in hitting a scorching .923 today. She had 12 kills on 13 attempts without committing a single error.
"I'm glad the Lori played well," said head coach Beth Launiere. "We knew this was the type of match that would be successful for Lori. She hits the slide very well for us and that just happens to be hard for Missouri State to defend. And, Sydney (Anderson) did a great job of getting her the ball this afternoon."
The three-game sweep came on scores of 30-22, 30-20 and 30-13. Missouri State suffers only its second loss of the year as it is now 7-2.
"I thought we had a good game plan coming into today's match," continued Launiere. "And, this was one of the first matches this season that we implemented and executed our plan this well.
"I felt like we took away a lot of Missouri State's strengths and as the match went on, it didn't have many options left."
The team hit .265 in the first game but unfortunately for MSU, Utah was just warming up. It hit an impressive .444 in the second frame and then hit an eye-popping .500 in the third and final game.
As the Utah-Missouri State match wrapped up the six-match, four-team round-robin tournament, four Utes were honored on the all-tournament team. Airial Salvo and Whitney Webb were all-tourney while Connie Dangerfield was the tournament libero. The tournament MVP was Emillie Toone. Also making all-tournament team were Hailey Jeppson (Utah State), Katelyn Panzau (Missouri State) and Sarah Lansing (Missouri State).
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Anderson set the attack in handing out 35 assists. She also had four kills and four digs today. Sophomore setter Shannon Krug came on late in the match to hand out four assists.
Utah held the Bears to a meager .068 hitting while the Utes held the 10.5-8 edge in team blocks. Toone nearly had a double-double as she led all players with eight total blocks. Webb added five blocks while Kathryn Lovell put up three of her own.
Dangerfield led all players with 18 digs while Salvo helped out with 12.
Leading the Bears was Lansing (11 kills), Panzau (28 assists and 10 digs) and Shanda Harper (five blocks).
The Utes take a brief two days off before it returns to the court. Utah heads to Weber State to battle the Wildcats on Tuesday, Sept. 12. First serve is set for 7 p.m.
Notes: Outside hitter Airial Salvo has had double-digit digs in seven straight matches ... Emillie Toone had 25 total blocks in the three matches this weekend. She wrapped up the Utah Classic with an amazing 2.78 blocks per game. She entered the week averaging 2.0 per game ... the team averaged 4.39 blocks per game during the Utah Classic ... Utah's opponents hit .050 during the tournament this weekend. In fact, three of the last four Ute opponents haven't broken the .100 barrier in hitting (Fresno State, -.033; Utah State, -.026; and Missouri State, .068) ... the Utes hit .324 last weekend, upping their season average to .271.
