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The Daily Tar Heel

After losing to Duke, UNC volleyball sweeps Wake Forest

The No. 10 North Carolina volleyball team’s historic 15-game win streak came to a startling halt Friday when unranked Duke handed UNC its first loss of the season.

The loss, in front of a record crowd of 5,322 fans, was the first home loss for the Tar Heels since 2011.

Duke swept the matchup, winning each of the sets by at least three points, and throughout all three sets, UNC never led by more than three points. Still, coach Joe Sagula said, his team had its opportunities to gain momentum.

“I really thought we had our chances in the first two sets when it was close, 15-14 both games, I thought we had a good chance to do some things,” he said.

“(But) we never made strong points or runs at that point to establish ourselves.”

The first and second sets were nearly mirror images of each other. In both, the Tar Heels opened with a 13-10 lead, but Duke went on a 7-2 run and then a 7-1 run to win each set 22-25 .
In the third and final set — despite trailing early 5-8 — Duke stormed back to take a 15-12 advantage and 25-19 set victory.

“Our energy just wasn’t where it needed to be to keep competing,” sophomore middle blocker Paige Neuenfeldt said. . “The end of the third game was definitely a big lull.”

Against Duke, graduate student Jovana Bjelica led UNC with 10 kills and sophomore setter Jordyn Schnabl tallied a team high 17 assists. As a team, UNC totaled 28 attack errors — twice as many as Duke’s 14.

Sagula emphasized that the keys to rebounding from the loss were mental and had to be handled with maturity.

“We need to get a lot better,” he said Friday night. “I think it’s going to be a wakeup call for this team. This is now over. It’s done, it’s finished, and we need to move forward.”

UNC did move forward and bounced back to defeat Wake Forest in three sets on Saturday (25-15, 25-20, 25-21).

In the first set, Wake Forest jumped out to a 3-0 lead, but that proved to be the largest lead the Demon Deacons would hold throughout the match. UNC eventually tied the score 4-4 and outscored Wake 21-11 for the rest of the set.

In the second and third sets, Wake Forest stayed competitive, but the Tar Heels answered each of the Demon Deacons’ runs and won each set 25-20 and 25-21, respectively.
In the match, Bjelica once again led the Tar Heels in kills with 16, followed by junior outside hitter Lauren Adkins who had 12.

“I think everyone came in with a positive mindset (Saturday) morning at practice,” Adkins said. “Just, we’re going to get better and we’re going to work through it.”

Sagula liked how his team responded to the loss and thought the two games proved to be a good learning experience.

“We’ll look back at this weekend as being hopefully a really good turning point for our team to get to the next level,” Sagula said.

sports@dailytarheel.com

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