Volleyball Preview: Ottoville Big Green vs. Paulding Panthers
The Ottoville Big Green will challenge the Paulding Panthers at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday. Ottoville will be looking to extend their current ten-game winning streak.
Ottoville will bounce into Thursday's game after beating Leipsic, who they hadn't topped in nine consecutive meetings. Ottoville sure made it a nail-biter, but they managed to escape with a 3-2 victory over Leipsic on Tuesday.
Ottoville wouldn't go down easily and took Leipsic into a fifth set where they got it done with a six-point win. The final score came out to 20-25, 25-20, 25-18, 21-25, 15-9.
Meanwhile, everything went Paulding's way against Hicksville on Tuesday as Paulding made off with a 3-0 win. For those keeping track at home, that's the biggest victory the Panthers have posted against the Aces since October 2, 2017.
Paulding was especially dominant in the first set. The match finished with set scores of 25-15, 25-19, 25-17.
Grace Goyings was the offensive standout of the contest as she had four digs and two aces.
She wasn't the only good server: Paulding was lethal from the service line and finished the game with 15 aces. That strong performance was nothing new for the team: they've now served at least five aces in ten consecutive matchups.
Ottoville has been performing incredibly well recently as they've won 13 of their last 14 matches, which provided a nice bump to their 18-2 record this season. As for Paulding, their win ended a four-game drought at home and bumped them up to 8-10.
Here's a few offensive stats to keep an eye on ahead of Thursday's game: Ottoville has really dialed in their serving this season, having averaged 7.4 aces per game. However, it's not like Paulding struggles in that department as they've been averaging 8.8. Given these competing strengths, it'll be interesting to see how their clash plays out.
Ottoville was able to grind out a solid victory over Paulding in their previous meeting back in October of 2023, winning 3-1. Will Ottoville repeat their success, or does Paulding have a new game plan this time around? We'll find out soon enough.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
