ARLINGTON, Texas – Following its first loss in Sun Belt Conference regular-season play since 2019 on Friday night at Texas State, the Coastal Carolina volleyball team bounced back to cruise to a 3-0 win (25-16, 25-13, 25-18) over the UT Arlington Mavericks on Saturday night in Arlington, Texas.
 
The win pushes the Chants' record to 15-5 overall and 9-1 in Sun Belt play, and hands head coach Jozsef Forman his 200th career win as the leader of the Coastal volleyball program.
 
The loss drops UTA to 6-13 overall and 4-6 in conference play.
 
Coastal hit .409 as a team for the match offensively, while defensively the Chants held UTA to just a .033 hitting percentage and posted nine total blocks at the net in the 3-0 win. CCU nearly doubled-up the Mavs in kills with 47 to 24 and trailed just twice in the entire match.
 
The Chants also held an advantage in digs at 38-30 and a side-out percentage of 68.8 percent compared to the Mavericks' 43.2 percent.
 
A trio of Chants tallied double-digit kills on the night led by Cheyenne Jones and her match-high 13 kills on a season-best .524 hitting percentage. Outside hitters Ani Bozdeva and Doris Carter nearly posted double-doubles, as both finished with 11 kills and eight digs apiece in the three-set win.

With her 11 kills on Saturday, Bozdeva eclipsed the 1,000 career kills mark for her collegiate career (at Eastern Arizona and CCU).
 
Junior setter Brigitta Petrenko dished out 39 assists and was one of three Chants to pick up a service ace, while classmate Lina Perugini tallied a team-high 13 digs along the defensive backline.
 
The Mavericks had just two players record more than two kills overall in the match in Briana Brown with nine spikes and Brooke Townsend with six kills, while libero Ali Wells finished the match with a match-high 14 digs.
 
Both teams started the match trading errors over the first four rallies to put the score at 2-2 before trading kills from CCU's Jones and UTA's Monica LaFleur to keep the first set knotted up at 3-3.
 
However, a kill from Ilse Sinnige kick-started a 9-0 run to push the Chanticleers out in front at 12-3 and force the home team to use their second timeout.
 
Another 4-0 spurt by the Chants, highlighted by two kills from Bozdeva, pushed the lead out to 11 at 16-5, before the Mavs closed the gap to seven at 17-10 on a 5-1 run.
 
Coastal would push its lead out to as high as 10 at 22-12 on a Madison Lowery spike and would not allow UTA to get any closer than seven at 23-16 before a Jones' kill and a Mavs' attack error sealed the 25-16 first-set win for the women in black and teal.
 
Up 1-0, the Chants refused to take their foot off the gas pedal in the second set, rolling out to an 8-3 lead on five straight points capped off by a block from the tandem of Jones and Sinnige to force a UTA timeout.
 
After the Mavs cut the Coastal lead to three at 9-6, the Chants answered with another 5-0 surge to pull back out in front by eight at 14-6 and force another UTA timeout.
 
CCU kept pouring it on, as the Mavs cut the lead to six at 15-9 on a Brown kill, only to see the Chants close out the set on a 10-4 run, highlighted by a service ace from Petrenko, and two kills each from Jones and Carter to propel the visitors to a double-digit 25-13 second-set win.
 
The Chants hit a stellar .556 as a team in the second set, posting 16 kills and just one error on 27 total attempts. They also had two service aces and six block assists in the second-set victory.
 
UTA took only its second lead of the match at 1-0 to start the third set on a Townsend kill, yet the lead did not last long as the Chants scored seven of the next eight points to storm out to a 7-2 lead on back-to-back solo blocks from Jones.
 
Following a UTA timeout, the two teams traded points back-and-forth before the Mavs strung together three straight points on two kills and a service ace to trim the Chants' lead to just two at 9-7.
 
That would be as close as the Mavs would get for the remainder of the set, as the Chants used the right arms of both Bozdeva and Jones for two kills each to answer with a 6-1 run to pull back out in front big at 15-8.
 
The two teams went back-and-forth with the Chants holding on to the lead before a 3-0 spurt by the home team put the score at 20-16.
 
CCU answered with a 3-0 run of its own to pull back in front by seven at 23-16 and then closed the match out on kills from Carter and Bozdeva over the final three points to pick up the 25-18 third-set win and complete the 3-0 match sweep.
 
The offense hit .452 in the final set, again posting 16 kills and this time only two attack errors over 31 attempts.
 
The Chanticleers will remain on the road next weekend, as CCU will make the Alabama swing with contests at Troy on Friday, Oct. 29, and then at South Alabama two days later on Sunday, Oct. 31.

For complete coverage of CCU volleyball, follow the Chants on social media @CoastalVball (Twitter), facebook.com/CCUChanticleers (Facebook), @GoCCUSports (Instagram), or visit the official home of Coastal Carolina Athletics at www.GoCCUsports.com.