McMath, Longley Lead Mountaineers to First 2017 Victory

WILMINGTON, N.C.  — Appalachian State University volleyball earned its first victory of the 2017 season in a 3-1 match (27-25, 25-21, 21-25, 25-23) over UNC Wilmington on Saturday night. 

"We had been playing hard the first two matches so it was nice to get challenged again by a really good Wilmington team," said head coach Matt Ginipro. "Melissa McMath did an awesome job on the right and I thought everybody played great - the energy was high tonight."

The Mountaineers got the win behind stellar performances from McMath and Emma Longley. McMath finished with 18 kills while Longley tallied 17. Kara Spicer and Lexi Kohut rounded out the App State attack with 11 and 10 kills, respectively.

Ashlyn Brown racked up 45 assists and had 19 digs - good for her third double-double of the season. Olivia Loeffer led the Mountaineers with 33 digs while Sydney Farthing also had double-digit digs with 11.

Down 16-9 in the first set, the Apps would use a 9-0 run to take the lead from the Seahawks and go up 18-16.  The Mountaineers would trade points with Wilmington for the rest of the set until taking the set on back-to-back Seahawk errors, 27-25. 

Wilmington seemed to try and sway the momentum back in its favor and got out to a 9-4 lead in the second set. Again, Appalachian would answer and steal the lead from the Seahawks, 14-13. Unlike the first set, App State would pull away and go up by as many as six points to take set two and a 2-0 advantage going into the break.

Appalachian would get out to a quick start in the third set and snag a 16-11 lead before Wilmington executed its own 9-0 run. The Seahawks would eventually force a fourth set on back-to-back kills by Madison Peters.

In the fourth set, multiple kills by McMath and Longley gave App State its largest lead of the night by seven points, 19-12. Appalachian maintained the lead for much of the set before Wilmington tied it up at 23, but back-to-back kills by Spicer secured App State's first victory of 2017. 

The Mountaineers will play once more this weekend in a morning match tomorrow against Loyola (Md.) at 10:00 a.m.