Michigan State Improves To 4-1 With Sweep Of Marshall

Michigan State improved to 4-1 overall on the season with a 3-0 sweep of Marshall (25-10, 25-18, 25-22) on Friday night at Jenison Field House.

A crowd of 1,708 was on hand to take in MSU’s second victory of the day in the Auto Owners Insurance Spartan Invitational. Brooke Kranda and Holly Toliver shared th match lead with 11 kills each; Kranda committed just one error and hit .476, adding five blocks and a pair of aces. Toliver also had two service aces, and added eight digs.

The Spartans hit .299 for the match, and outblocked the Herd 9-5. MSU held Marshall to a .037 hitting percentage, the fourth time in five matches that the Spartans have held a team under .100 for the match. Madison Hill led Marshall with eight kills, while Addisyn Rowe and Jac’cara Walker finished with six each.

QUOTABLE
“I’d like to see us close things out and finish a match strong – I thought we took our foot off the gas a bit at the end. We certainly did a good job today in being low error, which was something we wanted to focus on after last Saturday. I’m going to look for us to continue that tomorrow while we also focus on closing out sets. We had some really nice performances today, and I’m liking how our team is approaching the things we wanted to clean up after our first weekend of play.” 
– Head Coach Cathy George

TOP PERFORMERS 

• Holly Toliver posted a match-high 11 kills, eight digs, and two aces.
• Brooke Kranda finished with 11 kills and five blocks, hitting .476 (11-1-21) on the night.
• Autumn Bailey had a match-high 12 digs, two aces and five kills (.357).STATS AND STORYLINES 
• MSU got 22 of 36 kills from Kranda and Toliver.
• Alyssa Garvlink had a team-best six blocks and five kills. She is averaging 2.06 blocks per set on the season.
• The Spartans have had six or more service aces in all five matches this season. MSU is averaging 2.5 aces per set.
• MSU has swept four of its five matches in 2017, and has played just 16 sets overall.GAME REPLAY 
• SET ONE: MSU coasted to a 25-10 victory in the opening set, hitting .321 (10-1-28). Toliver led the way with four kills, while Kranda had three along with three blocks to stifle the Marshall offense, which hit -.049 (8-10-41). MSU had four blocks in the frame along with a pair of service aces, and also got six digs each from Holly Toliver and Autumn Bailey.
• SET TWO: The Spartans took the second set by a closer 25-18 margin, but MSU hit .600 early in the frame in building their lead. MSU finished with a .345 percentage in the frame, led by a 5-0-7 performance from Kranda, who added an ace and a dig. Toliver had four kills to push her match total to eight, tied with Kranda for the match lead through two sets.
• SET THREE: The final set was much closer than the first two, with the Herd rallying to knot the score at 15-15 midway through the frame. MSU pulled away to get to 23-17, but Marshall went on a 4-0 run to trim it back down to two points, 23-21. The Herd challenged each of the final two points, but the Spartans closed it out on a Kranda kill and a Marshall error to record their fourth sweep in five matches.