CHICOUTIMI – Elyssa Lajmi scored 19 points, on the strength of 16 kills, and contributed 14 digs on defence as McGill swept the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi 3-0 in women’s volleyball at the Pavillon sportif, Saturday.
The result stretched McGill’s win streak to four games with seven victories in the last 10 as their record improved 8-7. The Martlets now sit two points behind the last two playoff spots, held down by Laval (9-5) and UQAM (9-6). The loss by UQAC dropped then to 3-13 with six games remaining and they have now been officially eliminated from a shot at the post-season.
In the wake of a long five-hour, same-day bus trip, things got off to a shaky start. After a wild 28-26 victory over the Inuk in the first set, the Martlets settled down to take the final two sets 25-14 and 25-12.
“UQAC played very well in the first set, they came out very strong and highly motivated for a fight,” said McGill head coach Rachèle Béliveau, whose troops are healthy now after a difficult two-week period where more than 50 per cent of her squad was under the weather. “They are a smaller team than us so they use all kinds of hand touches (at the net) and it was really working for them. We needed to be patient because if you panic in that situation, things can quickly turn from bad to worse. We were able to adjust our game plan during the first set, while it was underway. The girls did that adjustment really well and as we eventually took control.”
It was the second-highest offensive output of the season for Lajmi, a first-year graduate certificate student in English and communications, who hails from France. She was 3.5 points of her personal best, when she tallied 22.5 points in a five-set loss to the Montreal Carabins on Oct. 27. The six-foot power-hitter hammered out her game-high 16 kills on 34 attempts with only two errors for a lofty 41.2 per cent kill percentage. She added a solo stuffed block and four assisted blocks.
Lajmi’s supporting cast included sophomore middle blocker Emilia Grigorova(9.5 points), from Bulgaria, and Rachel Leduc (8 pts), a management junior from Montreal. Grigoria also had a high kill percentage with five kills on eight touches (62.5%).
“We’re trying to spread the scoring load over many hitters, instead of just one,” revealed Béliveau. “So now we have a few more players getting into a higher kill percentage.”
Leading the way for UQAC was Lena Carannante with 10 points.
McGill had the upper-hand on most of the key statistics, leading in kills (36-31), aces (7-4), stuff blocks (7-4), digs (42-33) and assists (36-31).
With a half-dozen contests remaining for the Martlets, they are in the mix to be among of the four schools that qualify for post-season play in the eight-team RSEQ conference. McGill’s next four games are all against teams seeded near the bottom of the standings, beginning with a rematch in Chicoutimi (3-13) on Saturday (Jan. 25) morning at 11 a.m.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login