Volleyball Prepares For Colossal Road Trip

Laredo, Texas - With the Heartland Conference tournament drawing nearer, Texas A&M International University finds themselves in solid position as they prepare to make their final push for the postseason. After the first round of conference play, the Dustdevils (10-12, 4-3 HC) are currently fourth in the standings behind Dallas Baptist (4-3 HC), Arkansas-Fort Smith (6-1 HC) and St. Edwards (7-0 HC).

Thursday the team kicks off a two-game road trip starting with Oklahoma Panhandle State, followed by U.T. Permian Basin on Saturday.  With four teams currently battling for the final two spots in the conference tournament and home games remaining against Fort Smith and St. Edward's, Head Coach Al Givens says his team has to take care of business now, "Obviously it's a big week for us, we have to put our focus on OPSU, but a road sweep would be huge.  Permian Basin is only one game behind us in the standings and every team in this league plays well at home."

The Dustdevils home record versus conference opponents remains unblemished at 3-0 and the team is one win away from tying the total number of wins from the last three years combined.  Nonetheless, the ladies are coming off back to back losses versus conference opponents and Coach Givens has shaken things up in practice this week to get the team back on track. Coach Givens says, "I wasn't pleased with our defensive effort to the ball, we sat back instead of playing an aggressive defense and that led to some miscues.  Monday we focused on getting our back court to play with what I like to call "controlled aggressiveness", hopefully it'll pay off when we're back on the court."

Seven conference games remain on the schedule, with TAMIU playing four of those at home and three on the road.  Coach Givens iterated that although the road games will be versus teams that struggled early on, the word is out on the Dustdevils, "I don't think many people saw us coming and that may have worked to our advantage... that won't be the case the second time around.  The word is out on TAMIU and teams are going to prepare for us differently than they did in the first round of play.  We Want to be better than 4-3 and that starts with getting a win on Thursday."

(For more information contact TAMIU Sports Information Director Michael Blakeb michael.blake@tamiu.edu)