Special to The Eagle
The Texas A&M volleyball team used its speed on offense to beat Italy's taller A2 national team 25-22, 25-21, 25-15 in front of 1,406 at Reed Arena on Tuesday.
The teams agreed to play a fourth set to cap the exhibition, and Italy won 26-24.
Mary Batis led A&M with 11 kills, while Alisia Kastmo had nine and Sarah Ammerman had eight. The Aggies also had nine team blocks to Italy's eight and eight aces to Italy's four, but A&M head coach Laurie Corbelli said she would've liked to see her squad maintain its tempo throughout the match.
"It was our goal to work really hard to create the intensity we wanted right off the bat, and I was somewhat disappointed we weren't able to do that as planned," Corbelli said. "I think some of it had to do with the Italian style, which is very slow and a very high-ball style. They have the ball for 10 seconds and we have it for 2, so I think the team fell into a little bit of their pace."
In Game 1, A&M built a 12-8 lead and held off a couple of Italian rallies to win with three Ammerman kills over the game's final five points.
A&M broke a 20-20 tie in Game 2 and used kills by Kastmo and Jennifer Banse to clinch the 2-0 lead.
Italy's slower game no longer held the Aggies spellbound in Game 3 as A&M opened a 9-4 lead, built it to 16-5 and cruised from there.
"Once we made them aware of [Italy's slow pace] and just set a couple of new mini-goals of the things we wanted to get done, the team started to respond a little more and it started looking like Aggie volleyball," Corbelli said.
The Italian team, a mixture of players from Italy's Youth and Junior National Teams along with some players from the Senior National Team, was led by 6-foot-6 Floriana Bertone who had 13 kills.
A&M closes out its nonconference schedule this weekend at the Texas State CenturyTel Premier in San Marcos. The Aggies will face Hofstra and Texas Southern on Friday at 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., respectively, at Strahan Coliseum. A&M also will play Texas State at 2 p.m. Saturday.
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