Oct. 7, 2009

Final Stats

Contact: Greg Murphy

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio - Beth Greulich had 19 kills and hit .500, leading Cleveland State to a 3-0 sweep at Youngstown State in Horizon League action on Wednesday night.

Match scores were 25-19, 25-22, 25-20.

The win, CSU's fifth straight, all of which have been sweeps, improved the Vikings to 16-5 overall and maintained their hold on first place in the league at 5-1. YSU slipped to 6-12 overall (4-4 HL).

Senior Maggie Bonomini made a match-high 16 digs, allowing her to move over the career 1,000 dig mark. She now has 1,012 for her career and is 14 shy of moving into 10th place on the all-time list at CSU.

"This is a very important week for us with three matches to conclude the first round of league play and I was happy with the way we started things off tonight," head coach Chuck Voss said. "We continued to play really well on defense and Beth and Liz were phenomenal hitting the ball. Our defense, ball control and passing has been allowing us to get good opportunities at the net and we have been taking advantage of them."

Liz Fazio aided Greulich's effort with 14 kills and the duo accounted for 33 of CSU's 49 kills. Fazio also had nine digs, coming up just short in her bid for another double-double.

Jordan Goad added 43 assists and four digs, while Meghan Mental recorded three service aces.

Greulich got the Vikings off to a quick start in the first set, posting eight kills in the set.

Holding a 10-8 lead, CSU scored the next four points to take a 14-8 lead on a Greulich kill. The Vikings pushed the lead to as many as eight points in taking the first set.

YSU took a quick 8-4 lead in the second set, only to watch CSU hang around and tie things up at 15-15 on a Greulich kill. The teams continued to exchange points until CSU broke a 19-19 tie on back-to-back service aces by Mental to put the Vikings ahead, 21-19, and force a Penguin timeout.

A YSU point brought the Penguins back within one, but they would get no closer as kills from Fazio and Greulich and a YSU attack error concluded the set.

CSU came out of the break and jumped ahead 5-2 in set three, forcing a quick YSU timeout. It worked as the Penguins came back to tie the set at 10-10.

With the set still tied at 13-13, the Vikings used a kill from Kara Koch, a kill from Fazio and a YSU attack error to extend their lead to 16-13 and the Penguins would get no closer than two points the rest of the way.

CSU was once again stellar at the net, hitting .337 (49-15-101), compared to .260 for the Penguins.

The Vikings also finished with more digs (46-32), aces (6-1), kills (49-39) and blocks (8-7) than YSU.

CSU continues its busy week when the Vikings host Milwaukee at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday (Oct. 10) in Woodling Gym.