The Chattanooga Mocs volleyball team jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead before fighting off a furious comeback effort to clinch a 3-2 (25-15, 25-17, 17-25, 20-25, 15-12) victory over UNCG in Southern Conference action inside Maclellan Gymnasium Sunday evening.
Chattanooga begins the season with three-straight victories for just the fifth time in program history, and third time under head coach Travis Filar. The Mocs are 3-0 and 1-0 in SoCon play while UNCG drops its first match of the 2020-21 season to move to 0-1, 0-1 SoCon.
Chattanooga limited UNCG to a mere .038% attack percentage over the first two sets and countered with a .180% mark to help build the early 2-0 lead and momentum.
The Spartans reversed roles the next two sets, attacking at a combined .211% clip including a .267% percentage in the fourth, to force a deciding fifth set.
The Mocs scored eight of the next 12 points after falling behind 3-1 in the fifth to pull ahead 9-7 and force UNCG into a timeout. With the set knotted at 11, Coniah Davis (Glen Allen, Va.) broke the tie with a kill ahead of a Spartans attack error to give UTC a two-point cushion. A Davis kill and UNCG attack error a few rallies later ultimately ended things, 15-12.
Chattanooga sported a balanced offensive attack with five attackers registering at least seven kills. Hayden McGee (Dacula, Ga.) led UTC with 10 kills while Davis and Maia Rackel (Signal Mountain, Tenn.) each finished with nine kills on a similar .222% percentage. MacKenzie Saitta (Elkhorn, Neb.) and Gylian Finch (Mt. Morris, Ill.) finished with eight and seven, respectively.
Sophia Bossong (Murfreesboro, Tenn.) dished out 36 assists, seven in the deciding fifth set, and recorded five kills and eight digs to aid the winners. Bailey Steger (Half Moon Bay, Calif.), a Loyola Marymount transfer, made her UTC debut and recorded four assists, a kill and three digs.
Defensively, four Mocs reached double digits in digs with Paige Gallentine (Fenton, Mich.) leading the way with a match-high 25. Brenna Everingham (Noblesville, Ind.) added 15 digs while Makenzie Jordan (Murfreesboro, Tenn.) posted 13.
McGee capped off a kill-dig, double-double behind a season-high 11 digs. Rackel led UTC with 6.0 total blocks at the net while Davis recorded 4.0 total, in addition to 3.0 from both Sarah Flynn (Alpharetta, Ga.) and Saitta.
MATCH BASICS | BOX SCORE
SET 1 | UTC 25, UNCG 15
SET 2 | UTC 25, UNCG 17
SET 3 | UNCG 25, UTC 17
SET 4 | UNCG 25, UTC 20
SET 5 | UTC 15, UNCG 12