UNC volleyball keeps win streak alive

Ackland Art Museum, located on Franklin Street, opened its new exhibit "PhotoVision" on Thursday evening. The exhibit features around 150 photographs tracing the history of photography from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. The photographs were arranged in areas including "Photography and Multiplicity", "Sacred Spaces", "Process and Product", and "Staging the Image".

Before Friday’s matchup against Oklahoma, North Carolina volleyball coach Joe Sagula said the Sooners were one of the best teams on the schedule, boasting a 9-2 record.

But by the end of the match, the No. 13 North Carolina volleyball team was not impressed.

UNC defeated Oklahoma 3-1 and would go on to beat West Virginia 3-0 on Saturday to sweep the ACC-Big 12 Classic.

In the first two sets, the Sooners struggled. But for the UNC middle blockers, it was a block party.

The Tar Heels blocked Oklahoma four times in the first set and three times in the second to keep up with their season average of 3.12 per set.

But UNC came out of the locker room flat and committed six attack errors, allowing Oklahoma to take the third set.

Sagula said the third set was about UNC beating itself.

“I thought we played without a real attention and focus,” Sagula said. “We just made some more errors, unforced ones. But I thought we made a good push at the end.”

UNC’s push carried over into the fourth set, shutting down the Sooners 25-18 to finish the match.

Sophomore outside hitter Tatiana Durr said after the third set, the message in the huddle was to keep Oklahoma from gaining more momentum .

“Oklahoma served really tough in the third set. They got us off our groove a little bit,” Durr said. “In the fourth set, we really emphasized coming back out, getting good passes and putting swings away immediately and not let them go on any runs.”

Against West Virginia, UNC had little trouble. The Mountaineers never led and only managed to tie the game once in the second set.

Similar to its match with Oklahoma, the Tar Heels had a 2-0 lead going into the fourth set. Sagula said the message in the locker room did not change.

“We could’ve pressed the recording from last night,” Sagula said. “I think the difference was we put enough good things together and had some big blocks.”

The Tar Heels are now 9-1 and winners of seven straight games.

Senior outside hitter Lauren McAdoo said she knows the team can have a special year. She added that the team doesn’t pay attention to what other people think of them.

Instead, they’ll have tunnel vision until the postseason.

“We’re trying not to put so much emphasis on preseason this year because we put a lot of emphasis on preseason last year and didn’t finish in postseason like we wanted to,” McAdoo said. “So we’re trying to focus on maintaining this effort the entire season and mostly a lot of the focus in December, when it matters the most.”

sports@dailytarheel.com

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