The Highlands Bluebirds will face off against the Lafayette Generals at 6:00 p.m. on Friday. Lafayette took a loss in their last match and will be looking to turn the tables on Highlands, who comes in off a win.
On Thursday, everything went Highlands' way against Bellevue as Highlands made off with a 3-0 win. The victory made it back-to-back wins for the Bluebirds.
Not only was the match a shutout, it was a big one: Highlands took every set by at least 15 points. The final score came out to 25-6, 25-4, 25-10.
Ava Muzumdar and Audrey Sorrentino were among the main playmakers for Highlands as the former had four digs and four aces and the latter had four aces and 15 assists. That's the most aces Muzumdar has posted since back in September.
Highlands couldn't miss and finished the game having scored on 65.2% of their attack attempts. That's a new trend for them: their average hitting percentage was 29.7% earlier this season, but in their last five contests they've averaged 38.1%.
Meanwhile, Lafayette faced Lexington Catholic in a battle between two of the state's top teams on Wednesday. Lafayette fell just short of Lexington Catholic by a score of 3-2. The Generals have struggled against the Knights recently, as their game on Wednesday was their fifth consecutive lost matchup.
Lafayette wouldn't go down easily and took Lexington Catholic into a fifth set but they suffered a heartbreaking six-point loss. The match finished with set scores of 25-27, 25-14, 25-14, 24-26, 15-9.
Highlands pushed their record up to 20-7 with the victory, which was their sixth straight at home. As for Lafayette, their loss dropped their record down to 21-10.
Here's a few offensive stats to keep an eye on ahead of Friday's matchup: Highlands has really dialed in their serving this season, having averaged 8.2 aces per game. However, it's not like Lafayette struggles in that department as they've been averaging 6.9. Given these competing strengths, it'll be interesting to see how their clash plays out.
Highlands was able to grind out a solid win over Lafayette in their previous meeting back in August of 2021, winning 2-0. Will Highlands repeat their success, or does Lafayette have a new game plan this time around? We'll find out soon enough.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
