October 6, 2022
Bucs Sweep Saints in Return to the Court
Seeing their first action in 12 days due to Hurricane Ian's devistation to Florida's West Coast, the #1 Florida SouthWestern State Buccaneers didn't skip a beat on Thursday on the road in Gainesville, sweeping the Santa Fe Saints 3-0 behind a balanced offensive attack and a big block at the net to improve to 15-0 on the year.
GAINESVILLE, Fla.- Seeing their first action in 12 days due to Hurricane Ian's devistation to Florida's West Coast, the #1 Florida SouthWestern State Buccaneers didn't skip a beat on Thursday on the road in Gainesville, sweeping the Santa Fe Saints 3-0 behind a balanced offensive attack and a big block at the net to improve to 15-0 on the year.
The Bucs were rolling right from the get go, jumping out to a 6-2 lead in the first and never looking back against the Saints. They opened up their lead to 14-6 midway through the set on a big block from Alondra Alarcon and Izzy Collier and continued to push, eventually going up by as many as nine at 22-13 when Maiana Coelho found Victoria Zibecchi on the right side before finishing off the Saints 25-16 on an ace to go ahead 1-0 in the match.
The second was all FSW as the Bucs jumped out to another big early lead, this time 12-5 as Santa Fe had trouble slowing down the potent Buccaneer offensive attack. The Bucs hit 20 before the Saints got to double digits at 20-8 when Christina Pratcher and Roberta Purashaj combined for a stuff and Barbara Koehler put the set to bed with a big kill on the outside to give the Bucs a 25-13 victory to go up 2-0.
The Bucs went to their bench in the third and it took a while for the FSW reserves to find their footing. Santa Fe took their first lead of the night early on and it wasn't until 15-15 that the Bucs leveled the score. Tied at 17 four points later, a 5-0 burst for the Bucs with Jada Coleman at the service line pushed the in front 22-17 and they held off a late charging Saints squad to take the set 25-23 and complete the sweep.
The Bucs hit .298 on the night despite committing eight hitting errors in the third. Alarcon led the way with a match high 10 kills while Maria Cecilia had 9 in the victory. Purashaj dished out 27 of FSW's 34 assists in the win while Arianna Rossi led the way with 9 digs and 3 aces. The Bucs combined for 9 blocks as a team in the win with six different players getting in on two or more, led by Julia Lawrenz who had 4 in just two sets of work.
FSW pushes their season record to 15-0 overall and 7-0 in Suncoast Conference play with the win while Santa Fe remains winless in conference action at 0-7 and falls to 4-8 overall.
The Bucs will have a quick turnaround as they travel to Daytona Beach on Friday before taking on the 17th ranked Falcons on Saturday afternoon on the Space Coast.