The Tuskegee University Volleyball team ended its best season in three years Tuesday night at the 2018 Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) Volleyball Tournament inside the Birmingham CrossPlex in Birmingham, Ala. TU opened the day with a 3-1 win and eliminated Paine College before falling to Albany State 3-1 in an evening matchup.
In game one, the Golden Tigers handled the Lions in four sets (25-22, 20-25, 25-16, 25-19). The two teams met in September and the match ended wth the same results.
First Team Outside hitter
Taliyana Bryant and
Syncere Ellis led the team with 10 kills each with
Takeba Dowden adding four.
Kiah Vanhoose paced the Golden Tigers with six Aces. Bryant and Dowden contributed four and two respectively.
Cyrani Butler was the team leader in assists with 15 with Briana Fisher chipping 10.
In game two, TU dropped set one 25-22 but bounced back and took set two with the exact same score but could not manage to win another set beyond that.
The Golden Tigers ended up getting outscored by 22 points overall and also fell 20 kills shy of what the Golden Rams notched.
Crystal Hall led TU with 11 and 10 kills respectively. Wearing the Crimson uniform for the very last time, Butler finished with a team-high 17 digs.
Head coach Janay Yancey has done a complete turn around from her first year as head coach in 2017 when she was only able to win three conference games. This year, she's gotten her team to post a 17-win season including 12 in conference play. This is the first time the team has been above .500 since the 2015 season and for the first time in school history, the program completed play at the 2018 (SIAC) West Cluster without suffering a loss.
