Written By: Neil Frawley

The VSU volleyball team improved its record to 8-3 after defeating the University of West Georgia on Tuesday in a three set sweep.

Despite the sweep, Mike Swan recognizes when the score doesn’t match the performance that he expects out of his team.

According to Swan, he is pleased with his team’s improvement thus far, but is still unhappy with the amount of unforced errors and sloppy plays that result in easy points against VSU. He believes the solution to his team’s miscues are to communicate more and hold each other more accountable on the court.

“(Sometimes) the setter and the hitter aren’t on the same page— we saw that a couple times tonight,” Swan said. “(Jessica Codato) would set something and nobody was there because they didn’t get the right signal, or they thought she was running something else.”

Swan does like the way his defense has played so far this season.

“I do like our defense,” Swan said. “It is something we’ve been working on the whole year. We were really scrappy (tonight), and now if we could just get our offense to always click I think we’ll create a lot of problems for opponents.”

Since the team suffered back to back losses against University of West Florida and Shorter University, earlier in the season, the Blazers found themselves towards the bottom of the Gulf South Conference standings. However, after winning four of their last five contests all against GSC competition, VSU has risen to fourth place in the conference, one spot behind No. 25 UWF.

With the entire team experiencing success, senior middle blocker Destiny Berry managed to shine a bit brighter than the rest this past weekend as she recorded a VSU school record 16 blocks against University Alabama-Huntsville, which also put her in a four-way tie for fourth place in the GSC for blocks in a game.

Defense was less keen against UWG on Tuesday, with VSU recording only one block and eight block-assists.

Codato turned in a strong performance offensively, recording 33 assists and hit 57 percent while being one of three Blazers to hit over 40 percent for the match.

“Jessica had a really solid performance,” Swan said. “She’s come a long way in the last year, and I like the progress she’s made.”

VSU continues conference play this week as they hit the road to play an unfamiliar opponent in Mississippi College. MC is new to the GSC this season and must wait two seasons before they can be eligible to compete in GSC postseason play.

Following MC, VSU will play at West Alabama on Saturday, before having six days off prior to hosting Lee University on Friday, Oct. 10, which will be the first of three straight at home.