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The UTEP volleyball team came away with a 3-0 victory against the Grand Canyon Antelopes in the second game of their four-game home stand, Oct 23.

Coming off a home victory against Rice, 3-0, the Miners returned to Memorial Gym to face the 8-12 Antelopes. Although the Miners struggled early, they quickly responded to take all three matches, (23-25, 25-15, 25-8).

“We’ve got to be better overall,” said Coach Holly Watts. “We ended up with some good numbers against Grand Canyon, who had a really great defense and kept a ton of balls. That challenged our defense to regroup defensively, but we still want to try to continue to get one more dig and one more kill and we want to keep working for that.

The Miners responded, led by senior Xitlali Herrera, who posted a game-high of 16 kills that earned her a .556 hitting percentage.

With the win, the Miners are now 11-7 overall and hold a 5-2 record in Conference USA. They are now preparing for their upcoming conference games against Alabama Birmingham and UT San Antonio.

The Blazers have a 15-9 overall record and 4-4 in Conference USA, and the Roadrunners have a 15-7 overall record, and a 7-1 record in Conference USA.

Senior Herrera said that two of the Conference USA games will be at home and that this helps up the team’s intensity.

“I think home-court advantage will play a big role. We are pretty good with playing here at home–our fans are awesome,” Herrera said. “These two games will be really hard. UAB, who is playing really well, and UTSA, I think, is the leader right now, so I think we are going to have to push hard and make sure our intensity is up throughout the game for every ball.”

Watts said she wanted to take advantage of playing both teams here at home,

“Its so important for us to have just the energy created in this gym by our fans,” Watts said. “It is amazing, so we would like to be able to build off of that. So Friday and again on Sunday, we definitely will need all the support we could get from the Miner fans.

The Miners will host UAB on Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. and UTSA on Oct 27th at 12 p.m.

Ellisia Shafer can be reached [email protected]