The Chattanooga Mocs (9-14, 3-5 SoCon) volleyball team returns home this weekend to take on Southern Conference foes Davidson (8-10, 4-4 SoCon) and Georgia Southern (16-6, 7-1) at Maclellan Gym Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
UTC and Davidson square off Saturday at 2 p.m. and the Mocs look to soar over the Eagles at 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon over the fall-break holiday.
Chattanooga enters the weekend series tied for third in the SoCon North with Elon, trailing only UNC Greensboro and Samford.
The Mocs are coming off a split of last weekend's matches, falling 3-0 to College of Charleston and taking a tight 3-2 win over The Citadel. Aside from back-to-back losses to Elon and UNCG to begin October, Chattanooga has split each of its SoCon weekend matchups on the season.
The Chattanooga defense enters the weekend ranked fourth in the conference with an average of 17.10 digs per set, led by SoCon digs leader Paula Passmore (Merritt Island, Fla.) who is currently ranked third in the NCAA with 6.14 digs per set. The Mocs are also averaging 1.57 blocks per set, totaling 130 on the season. Senior Christina Teter (Signal Mountain, Tenn.) is UTC's blocks leader with 63 on the season.
The Mocs' offense goes into the two-match weekend hitting .172 and averaging 11.76 kills per set, both ranking ninth in the SoCon. Freshman Julimar Alvarado (San Juan, Puerto Rico) is averaging a team-best 2.68 kills per set and was named last week's SoCon Freshman of the Week after recording a career-high and team-high 27 kills against The Citadel last Sunday.
Davidson comes to Chattanooga with the second-best digs average (17.61) and third-best blocking average (1.99) in the SoCon. Senior Molly Crenshaw is the Wildcats' digs leader with 5.09 digs per set and junior Tindall Sewell leads the defense with 0.89 blocks per set.
The Wildcats SoCon record is at an even .500, with wins over The Citadel, Wofford, Western Carolina and UNCG, while suffering losses to Furman, College of Charleston, Georgia Southern and Elon. Davidson currently ranks fourth in the SoCon South. The Wildcats are 2-3 on the road this season.
Georgia Southern, first place in the SoCon South, will take on Samford, first place in the SoCon North, before coming to Chattanooga Sunday. Offensive Player of the Week Meredith Paskert, GSU's first offensive weekly honoree, is coming off a weekend in which she hit .362 and averaged 4.00 kills per set against UNCG and Davidson. Paskert leads the Georgia Southern offense with 275 kills this season, averaging 3.27 kills per set.
The GSU defense is led by freshman Alexander Beecher, averaging 4.63 digs per set and totaling 389 digs on the season. Georgia Southern ranks third in the SoCon with 17.25 digs per set, averaging just .15 more digs than Chattanooga, and 1449 total digs for the 2012 slate. The Eagles also rank fifth in the conference with 1.88 blocks per set.
Seniors Teter and Meagan Ernd (Munster, Ind.) will be honored as the Mocs of the Matches as the Mocs begin to wrap up their regular season home schedule. Autographed mini-volleyballs, signed by the Moc of the Match, will be thrown to the crowd, and autographs will be available for fans post-match at the scorer's table.
Live stats and video are available online thought MocsVision.