On Tuesday Mallard Creek will have to hit the road after four straight games at home. They will venture away from home to face off against the Hopewell Titans at 6:30 p.m. The two teams are sauntering into the matchup backed by comfortable wins in their prior games.
Last Thursday, Mallard Creek got the win against West Charlotte by a conclusive 3-0.
Not only was the match a shutout, it was a big one: Mallard Creek took every set by at least 11 points. The match finished with set scores of 25-9, 25-10, 25-14.
Mallard Creek was lethal from the service line and finished the game with 14 aces. That strong performance was nothing new for the team: they've now served at least six aces in 11 consecutive contests.
Meanwhile, Hopewell made easy work of Harding University on Thursday and carried off a 3-0 win.
The 3-0 score doesn't show just how dominant Hopewell was: they took every set by at least ten points. Once all was said and done, the final score wound up at 25-10, 25-6, 25-15.
Hopewell can attribute much of their success to Kenadie Kurosawa, who had five digs and four aces, and Alivia Pettit, who had four aces.
Mallard Creek now has a winning record of 8-7. As for Hopewell, they are on a roll lately: they've won six of their last eight matchups, which provided a nice bump to their 10-5 record this season.
Here's a few offensive stats to keep an eye on ahead of Tuesday's match: Mallard Creek has serving mastered this season, having averaged 13.3 aces per game. However, it's not like Hopewell struggles in that department as they've been averaging 14.9. Given these competing strengths, it'll be interesting to see how their clash plays out.
Mallard Creek came up short against Hopewell in their previous matchup back in August, falling 3-1. A big factor in that loss was the dominant performance of Kurosawa, who had 11 digs and 22 assists. Now that Mallard Creek knows the damage she can cause, will they be able to stop her this time? There's only one way to find out.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
