Strength up the middle helps Rebels claim NCAA volleyball berth

UNLV volleyball coach Cindy Fredrick claims one of her program’s trademarks is being strong up the middle. That boast certainly holds up this year.

Middle blockers Ashley Owens and Elsa Descamps ranked in the top seven of the Mountain West in blocks per set and played a key role in UNLV (23-7) earning the first at-large NCAA Tournament bid in school history.

The Rebels will play 22nd-ranked Utah (20-11) in the first round at 4 p.m. Friday in Provo, Utah. The team’s top two blockers will face the tough task of trying to slow Utes star outside hitter Adora Anae, but both have been willing to adapt.

“I think sometimes when high school kids come in they don’t realize how hard it is to be a middle hitter at the Division I level,” said Fredrick, who has taken three programs to the NCAA Tournament. “It’s hard to make them understand that you need to make a lot of changes. Unless you buy into that, it’s hard to make middles good middles.”

Descamps, a sophomore from Toulouse, France, made 137 blocks and Owens, a junior from Amarillo, Texas, had 121 to help the Rebels finish third in the Mountain West in blocks per set. The two also finished in the top 12 in the conference in hitting percentage, after each expanding their offensive game.

Descamps arrived on campus as a sound blocker but not hitter, and had to adjust her style of play. In Owens, she found a teammate she could model parts of her game after.

“When I came here, I needed to change all my gestures, but looking at her helped me to improve,” Descamps said.

Owens always could hit the ball hard, but sometimes that was all she wanted to do. She worked on diversifying her range of moves in the offseason, such as adding more tips.

“Now she’s learned to have shots and learned to mix things up,” Fredrick said. “I think she’s got that good balance of being a good middle blocker and a good middle hitter now.”

Owens credited a lot of the team’s blocking success to communication, especially between the middles and outside hitters. More often than not, the team has been in sync when it comes to the timing and direction of its blocks, which has led to plenty of points.

“That’s what does it,” Owens said. “There’s a lot of communication happening whenever we go to our blocks.”

The team’s communication will have to be sharp to upset Utah for the first NCAA Tournament win in program history. The Utes have two local products — sophomore Emma Kirst (Bishop Gorman) and sophomore Berkeley Oblad (Coronado) — on their roster and enter the tournament on a three-match losing streak.

“It’s not like we have to play the best volleyball of our lives, but we have to have everyone step up their game a little bit,” Frederick said.

Ben Gotz can be reached at bgotz@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BenSGotz on Twitter.