New Challenges Await Eagles at GCU Invitational

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. – The Boston College volleyball team rolled to a 3-0 start to the 2018 season, sweeping the BC Invitational last weekend in the team's best start since the 2015 season. The Eagles hope to take that same performance on the road when they travel to Phoenix, Ariz. for the Grand Canyon University Invitational, Aug. 31 - Sept. 1.

"We played pretty low error and hit for a fairly high efficiency," head coach Jason Kennedy said of the team's performance over the weekend. "I'd like to see us continue to play clean volleyball while being able to run our system and play within the style we want to play in."

The Eagles bring the only undefeated record to the GCU Invitational after the first weekend of the season. Host GCU is 2-1 after beating New Mexico and Santa Clara in five sets and falling to Idaho in five at the Idaho Classic while Southern Utah is 0-3 after the UNLV Invitational with losses to LIU Brooklyn, UNLV and Indiana. Jacksonville State is 3-1, defeating Northern Alabama, Lamar and Mercer at the Jax State Invitational, falling to only Little Rock on the weekend.

The first road trip of the season will bring about more firsts, as BC has never faced Jacksonville State, Southern Utah or Grand Canyon in the program's history.

"These will be three new teams as far as a lot of us are concerned," Kennedy said. "I'm not sure anyone on our roster or coaching staff has experience with any of these teams so we'll need to put in a little extra time to prepare. Once the match starts though it's just another jersey on the side of the net. We learn about what they do, we make adjustments and we try to get to 25 before they do.

"I think all three teams played better at the end of the first weekend than they did at the beginning so they're all improving getting more and more comfortable with what their identity is and what they do. I think they'll all be tough matches for us."

The Eagles match up with Jacksonville State on Friday at 5:30 p.m. (ET) in GCU Arena. BC takes on Southern Utah on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. ET before concluding the weekend with host GCU at 9:30 p.m. ET. The match against GCU will be streamed live GCU's YouTube page.

New Challenges Await Eagles at GCU Invitational

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