RUSTON – The Louisiana Tech volleyball team dropped its final match of the season 3-1 (16-25, 25-22, 25-20, 25-15) to Southern Miss on Saturday afternoon.
 
The Lady Techsters finish the 2019 season with a 13-15 overall record and a 3-11 mark in Conference-USA play. Both win totals are more than double what Tech had in 2018.
 
Kaitlyn Adams led all hitters with 12 kills while posting a .281 hitting percentage. Emily Boylan added 10 kills and hit .333. Alyssa Zucco totaled up 16 digs.

"This obviously isn't how we wanted to end the season at all, and it's  frustrating because we know we blew some chances to do something really special. We just needed more people to play well than we had show up," said Lady Techster head coach Amber McCray. "That being said, hats off to Southern Miss for coming back to battle every day. Despite their record, they kept playing hard every match and dropped several close ones all year that prepared them for today. Letting teams build confidence from sets we should have won has been our struggle all year, and once again it got us beat today."
 
Mia Prostran and Abigail Hildenbrand distributed a balanced attack as Tech dominated the day's first set. Four Lady Techsters had three or more kills in the frame. Marie Helene Verlinden also played a key role from the service line, where she paced Tech to a seven-point run and 19-12 lead. The Lady Techsters didn't let up en route to a 25-16 win.
 
The Golden Eagles rebounded to take a hard-fought second set. Neither team led by more than two points until Southern Miss made a four-point run to take a 20-15 lead. Though the Techsters cut into the deficit, they weren't able to come all the way back and fell 25-22.
 
Th third set of the day was more of the same as Southern Miss emerged with a 25-20 victory after a back-and-forth frame. The Golden Eagles pulled away with five of the final six points.
 
Southern Miss carried that momentum into the day's final set. The Golden Eagles jumped out to a 15-8 lead and didn't look back for a 25-15 win.  
 
As a team, the Lady Techsters hit .208. Tech totaled up 10 blocks on the day, led by Verlinden's 6 stuffs. Prostran and Hildenbrand finished with 40 assists between them.s
 
Keep up with Louisiana Tech Volleyball throughout the offseason by following @LATechVB on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.