BATON ROUGE, La. – No. 21 Penn State women's volleyball improved to 5-0 on the season with a 3-0 (25-18, 25-21, 25-16) sweep over Troy on Friday night at LSU's Pete Maravich Assembly Center. The match was the second of the day for the Nittany Lions, who defeated Iowa State 3-1 just hours earlier. The matches were part of the Tiger Challenge.
Penn State concludes play at the Tiger Challenge on Saturday with a match against host LSU at 4 p.m. (ET). That match is available to stream with a subscription to SEC Network+.
The match against Troy couldn't have started much better for Penn State as it jumped out to a 5-0 lead just minutes after the first whistle. Gilliam Grimes was at the service line for all five points. Following a match-opening kill by Taylor Trammell, Grimes served for three consecutive aces to force a Troy timeout. The Lions added another point immediately after the timeout with a kill by Anjelina Starck.
The Lions led by as much as nine in the first set before eventually securing the seven-point win on a kill by Anastasiya Kudryashova.
Starck dominated while helping Penn State win the second set. She hit .500 with six kills on 10 swings. Weatherington added four kills for the Lions. Erika Williams made her collegiate debut in the second set and contributed two kills.
Zoe Weatherington took over in the final set with four kills and no errors on five swings. She finished the match with 11 kills on .476 hitting and is now hitting .489 with 26 kills through two matches at the Tiger Challenge.
Starck and Trammell also put up impressive numbers for the Lions. Starck hit .471 with 10 kills, while Trammell hit .538 with nine kills.
Maddy Bilinovic finished with 10 digs and has now reached double-digit digs in all five matches this season while averaging 3.83/set. Grimes tallied nine digs in addition to her three aces.
Troy received a solid effort from Halston Hillier with 10 kills. Tori Hester had nine kills.
Friday marked the first ever meeting between Penn State and Troy.