photo by: Chance Parker/Journal-World photo

Kansas Volleyball celebrates winning a point during the Jayhawk Classic match against Texas State at Horejsi Family Volleyball Arena on Saturday, Sept. 16, 2023.

The Kansas volleyball team continued its strong start to Big 12 Conference play Sunday afternoon, knocking off TCU at Schollmaier Arena in Fort Worth by a score of 3-1 (18-25, 25-14, 25-16, 25-15).

The Jayhawks bounced back from an uncharacteristic first set in which they hit just .129 and cruised through the remainder of the match. They never trailed again after going down 2-1 early in the second game on a kill from Brianna Green.

Four Jayhawks tallied double-figure kills, led by the usual suspects Ayah Elnady (16) and Reagan Cooper (14), as London Davis and Toyosi Onabanjo chipped in 10 apiece. Elnady added a team-high three service aces as well as 11 digs for a balanced stat line, while setter Camryn Turner had 42 assists and 10 digs.

The Horned Frogs were led statistically by sophomore outside hitter Jalyn Gibson, who had 13 kills on a .257 hitting percentage. As a team, TCU hit just .094 in the final three sets combined.

The match had begun much better for the Horned Frogs, as they used strong defense at the net to jump out to an early 8-3 lead. KU struggled to side-out and couldn’t claw its way back within three points for the remainder of the game.

“We realized that we made a lot of unforced errors, so we did things we could fix on our side,” Cooper said in a press release. “We looked to fix the unforced errors and give them stronger serves, so they have a hard time siding out (and that) helped a lot in the second set.”

The Jayhawks scored four straight points to take an early advantage before back-to-back Elnady kills through a TCU timeout with Caroline Bien serving fueled a decisive 6-0 run that put KU up as much as 20-9.

It was much the same story in the final two frames. The last set saw Davis sub in early and shine throughout, accumulating six of her 10 kills.

KU advanced to 14-4 overall, 5-3 in Big 12 play, with a pair of home matches against West Virginia coming up on Thursday and Friday.