MONTGOMERY—It has been a familiar theme so far this season as the Alabama State University volleyball team will be on the road for their first Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) road game of the season.  They will play at Alabama A&M Thursday, Sept. 27 at 7 p.m.
 
The game represents the Lady Hornets' 10^th road game of the year after playing in tournaments at Washington State, Alabama and a single game at Tennessee-Chattanooga.  The one difference in this game is that it is the first road conference game of the season, and more important, the first conference road game for 11 first year ASU players.
 
“Being on the road and facing tough competition is nothing new to this team,” Head Coach Penny Lucas-White said.  “It is something new as far as it being our first conference road game of the season.  We have been working hard to eliminate some of the nagging mistakes we continue to make and we have to eliminate those in order to have a chance to beat a team like Alabama A&M.”
 
Both teams have gone through a difficult preconference season and both teams picked up a lot of losses along the way.  But both teams were picked to be fairly close to each other when the preseason picks came out as Alabama A&M (2-15/1-0 SWAC) was picked to finish second in the East with 44 points and Alabama State (1-16.1-0 SWAC) was picked to finish third with 32 points.
 
“Alabama A&M has been one of the top volleyball programs in this conference for a long time,” Lucas-White said.  “Coach Brown has done an excellent job there and she always has their team ready for conference play.  We will need to be at the top of our game to compete with A&M.”
 
The Lady Bulldogs are the SWAC's top offensive team with a .150 hitting percentage and Bianca Richardson leads the conference in hitting at .268 and Clarissa Moore is fourth at .254.  Moore also had a SWAC-high 190 kills and Ashley Foreman is tops in assists with 437 (8.09 per set).
 
Rachel Smith continues to lead ASU in kills with 109 and in kills per set with 2.10.  Myla Marshall, after her record-setting match against Alcorn, leads the Lady Hornets in hitting percentage at .184.  Brooke Beasley has 365 assists and is third in the conference in that area averaging 6.76 per set.  Luiza Griz continues to be the backbone of the ASU defense and has 175 digs which is third in the conference averaging 3.24 per set.
 
The game will be played at T.M. Elmore Gymnasium and the live stats can be viewed at www.bamastatesports.com.