Volleyball will look to continue improving its record with two home games this week after going 1-0 last week.

In the win over the University of Texas at Arlington, the Wildcats were able to bounce back from a four-game loss streak by going back to the fundamentals, Head Coach Ijeoma Moronu Alstrup said. 

“I think that we played really clean volleyball, which is a lot of what we talked about last weekend,” Moronu Alstrup said. “It was really nice to see the girls respond well in practice last week and then go out and do what we’re asking of them.”

As a team, the Wildcats were efficient offensively, with four athletes who hit over .350 in the four-set match at UTA. Annaleise Sevier, sophomore outside hitter from Aubrey, hit .480 with a career-high 14 kills. 

Sevier said her setter, Rachel Koss, junior from Appleton, Wisconsin, played a huge role in her success in Saturday’s match, as well as other offensive pieces on the team. 

“My setter was giving me a lot of opportunities to score,” she said. “We were just all together working really well, and so we also had like another hitter that was on, and so I just think everybody was doing their job, which helped me to get to where I was.”

After the team effort against UTA, two Wildcats received conference accolades. Koss was named Setter of the Week, while Ashli Edmiston, senior outside hitter from Wilsonville, Oregon, was named Player of the Week. 

These are the fourth and fifth awards the Wildcats have received this season, and it is Koss’s second time being named Setter of the Week.  

“It’s really exciting to have those,” Moronu Alstrup said. “I think we have really decided as a team that it is more important for us to be successful as a group, but obviously individual honors just kind of show the hard work of those girls and then also all the people around them.”

This week, the Wildcats will play at home for the first time in nearly a month when they hosted the University of Tulsa on Sept. 15. Sevier said the team loves playing in Moody Coliseum.

“I personally think that we perform better in Moody, with our own fans and our own place,” Sevier said. “Translating everything that we’ve been doing and finally playing at home will just be a huge thing for us, and I think we’ll do great playing here.”

The visitors this week are Southern Utah University and Utah Tech University. After two weeks of Western Athletic Conference play, Utah Tech is 3-0 and at the top of the conference standings. 

Moronu Alstrup said it will be important for the team to continue with what worked against the Mavericks from UTA. 

“We just want to continue with our momentum of being able to control the game this last Saturday and control our own errors and our own kills,” she said. “Go for it when we can, but then be smart when we can’t.”

The Wildcats will host Southern Utah at 6 p.m. Thursday, and first serve of the game against Utah Tech is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Saturday.