After breezing through Central Michigan and Morgan State on Saturday, the Gators had another dominating performance against Michigan State.
Florida raced out to a 10-5 lead early on in the first set against the Spartans and simply never looked back. Michigan State never led the first set. Michigan native Carli Snyder recorded five of her 14 kills in the first set, both numbers led the team, which helped Florida take the opening set 25-13. Senior right side hitter Alex Holston also provided a presence on offense. She recorded four kills in the first set, three of them being part of the final four points of the set. Part of the struggles for Michigan State was there inability to attack the ball. They recorded eight kills to go along with 10 errors on 28 attacks. An embarrassing –0.71 percent.
However, Holston picked up where she left off at the end of the first set with a kill to open up the second set. After being knotted up at three, it was all Gators from there on out. Again, it was Snyder who powered this offense through the match. She recorded four kills in the second set. It wasn’t Florida’s cleanest game, but they still managed to pull away from the Spartans and win set number two 25-16. Again, the Spartans struggled to score on attacks. Connecting on eight of their 28 attacks, but also record eight errors for a whopping zero-percent (0%) on attacks.
Set three was a completely different Spartan team than we saw during the first two sets. After taking their first lead at 1-0 to begin the set, they also managed to go up 6-5 just moments later. But, once again, Florida turned it up a notch and controlled the rest of the match. Alex Holston played an absolutely beautiful third set. She recorded a team high seven kills in the final set. Michigan State did record a team high 15 kills in the final set, but that wasn’t enough against the overpowering Gators. Florida won the final set 25-19. The Gators never dropped a set while in East Lansing.
During the Spartan Invitational, Carli Snyder was rewarded with the Most Valuable Player trophy, while teammates Alex Holston and Rhamat Alhassan were on the All-Tournamet team.
The Gators advanced to 4-1 on the season and head to Brooklyn, New York between matchups against Denver and LIU Brooklyn. Florida will then take a rare mid-week trip to Tallahassee to square off versus in-state rival Florida State.