GREENEVILLE, Tenn. --- Kaily Weiss recorded nine kills while Shannon Murphy posted her eighth consecutive double-double as Tusculum swept King 3-0 Tuesday night in a non-conference volleyball match at Pioneer Arena.
The Pioneers (10-5) won the match by scores of 25-15, 25-21, 25-12 to record their fifth straight victory and have won seven of their last eight.
Tusculum finished the night hitting .279, including .346 in the final sets. TC posted 39 kills on its 111 total attempts with only eight errors. King (6-8) hit .000 as the Tornado had 24 kills and 24 errors in its 119 attacks.
Murphy, who was named the South Atlantic Conference Specialist of the Week earlier in the day, tallied 31 assists and 10 digs for her 13th double-double of the year. Sabrina Schleuger added seven kills and 10 digs while the trio of Laryssa Welch, Cassie Born and Madison Shumaker accounted for five kills each. Five players also hit for over .300 in the match including Weiss (.368), Welch (.400) and Born (.364) and senior Erin Carmody (1.000), who came off the bench and posted three kills in her three attacks in the final set.
Defensively, the Pioneers totaled 58 digs as Melissa Mazur finished with a team-high 13. Mariah Lewis added three kills and a match-high five blocks including two solo rejections.
King's Becca Huddleston led her team with seven kills, 16 digs and two service aces. Setter Sophie Badgett dished out 15 assists in her two sets of work, while Rebekah Hill and Amy Serowski contributed 11 digs each defensively for the visitors.
In the opening set, Born recorded four kills, while the Tornado hit for minus-.167 as TC triumphed 25-15. With the score tied 10-10, TC went on a 6-0 run for a 16-10 lead, which included a Lewis kill and five straight KU hitting errors. King would cut the deficit to four at 17-13 following an Emma Carico service ace, but the Pioneers closed out the frame with an 8-2 run, including an ace by Schleuger on set-point.
The second frame went back and forth as the score was tied 12 times with three lead changes. King took its largest lead of the night at 10-7 after back-to-back service aces from Serowski. TC battled to tie it at 12-12 after a Weiss kill. King would go up by two points on two more occasions at 14-12 and 15-13. TC went on a 5-1 run to led 18-16 after three consecutive kills from Shumaker. KU scored the next two points to tie it at 18-18. With the score knotted at 19-19, the Pioneers scored four in a row on a Lewis block, a Weiss kill and two hitting errors as TC led 23-19 en route to a 25-21 win.
Tusculum led wire-to-wire in the third set as TC jumped out to a 10-2 lead and closed out the set with a 9-3 run to seal the victory for the Pioneers. TC hit .364 in the final frame with 14 kills with two errors and 33 attempts.
Tusculum will begin a stretch of sixth straight matches away from Pioneer Arena starting with Friday's conference clash at Anderson which tips off at 7 p.m.
