Southland Conference Chooses Cain as Defensive Player of the Week
10/31/2016 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
Complete Southland Conference Release
FRISCO, Texas - In a press release issued Monday afternoon by the league office, Stephen F. Austin junior libero Lexus Cain was named the Southland Conference Defensive Player of the Week after helping the Ladyjacks to their second-straight 2-0 week in conference play.
With Cain’s second such selection of the 2016 campaign, Stephen F. Austin becomes the first team in the league since Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in 2015 to lay claim to consecutive Southland Conference Defensive Player of the Week citations.
All season long, the junior out of Amarillo, Texas, has been busy making the Ladyjacks’ back row one of the best defensive units in the nation. With Cain’s assistance, SFA collected two more Southland Conference sweeps - one at Lamar and the other at Houston Baptist - and tightened its grip on the number-two spot in the league standings last week.
In Beaumont, Texas, last Thursday night, Cain collected a match-high 22 digs in a 3-0 victory over Lamar. It represented the junior’s 11th match of 20 or more digs this season and she followed that up by scooping 12 more attack attempts at Houston Baptist on Saturday afternoon. That works out to a digs per set average of 5.67 through last week’s two matches and Cain’s efforts limited the Ladyjacks’ opponents to a hitting percentage of just .121 in that same span.
Cain leads the Southland Conference and ranks fourth in the nation with her impressive digs per set average of 5.41. Her 460 total digs are the 34th most in all of NCAA Division I volleyball and she needs just 34 more to tally an even 1,000 for her career.
As a team, Stephen F. Austin ranks second nationally with 18.29 digs per frame and has embarked on a season-best four-match winning streak. All of those wins have been by scores of 3-0, marking the first time since 2014 that the Ladyjacks have swept four consecutive league opponents.
In the midst of their busiest stretch of Southland Conference action this season, the Ladyjacks (16-8, 9-2 Southland) and their reigning SLC Defensive Player of the Week are set to begin a three-match week with a Tuesday night showdown at Sam Houston State (12-12, 6-5 Southland). First serve from the Health & Kinesiology Center in Huntsville, Texas, is scheduled for 6:30 p.m.
-SFA-
