GREENEVILLE, Tenn. --- Logan Witt led all players with 19 kills to pace the Queens University of Charlotte women's volleyball team to a 3-1 South Atlantic Conference win at Tusculum University Saturday afternoon at Pioneer Arena.
The Royals (6-5, 2-2 SAC) won the match by scores of 25-17, 25-9, 20-25, 25-23 as the Pioneers (2-5, 0-1 SAC) have dropped their last five contests.
Witt finished the match hitting .436 to go along with a pair of blocks in the victory. Teammates Chanel Turner and Casey Tarvin added 13 kills apiece while setter Mallory Swarts guided the Royals' offense with 47 assists as well as 10 digs on the defensive side. Tarvin completed her double-double with 19 digs, while libero JayCee Jones tallied a match-high 24 digs.
Tusculum's Kayli Dempster finished with eight kills and eight digs, Taylor Blythe had six kills and four blocks, while Carli Pigza and Cassie Born each contributed five kills. Setter Alyssa Rojas posted 22 assists and 12 digs, while Emily Lawless added 12 assists and eight digs.
TU senior libero Melissa Mazur recorded 23 digs defensively and is just five away from becoming only the third player in school history with 2,000 career digs to her credit.
Born added 16 digs to surpass the 700-dig plateau for her career.
Queens finished the match hitting .200 as the Royals totaled 56 kills and 21 hitting errors in his 175 total attempts. TU hit .103 for the match with 40 kills, 25 errors and 146 attempts. TU edged Queens in digs (83-79) and blocks (7.0-6.0).
The Royals used an 11-3 run in the opening set to claim a 25-17 decision. Witt led the charge with her five kills and her .556 hitting percentage to take a 1-0 lead in the match.
Queens scored the first four points in the second frame and led wire-to-wire winning 25-9. The Royals hit a blistering .323 while limiting TU to a minus-.162 effort while hitting into 11 errors for the set.
Tusculum bounced back with a 25-20 win in the third frame as TU scored the first four points and didn't look back to trim the match deficit to 2-1. The Pioneers hit .281 with four kills each from Blythe and Dempster.
There were nine ties and four lead changes in the fourth set. TU trailed 15-12, but after a timeout, the Pioneers responded with a 7-1 spurt as Tusculum led 19-16. Queens called a timeout and scored three straight to even the set at 19-19 after a kills from Turner. Tusculum regained the lead at 20-19, but four straight from the visitors put Queens up 23-20. The Pioneers cut the score to 24-23, but a kill from Tarvin on set point sealed the victory for the Royals.
Tusculum will be on the road for the first time this season on Tuesday when they travel to Harrogate, Tennessee to face long-time rival Lincoln Memorial University for a 7 p.m. match.
