The No. 23 Western Kentucky volleyball team closed out its final match before opening Conference USA play with a win over a red-hot St. John’s team on Saturday.

The Lady Toppers used a strong defensive performance to snap the Red Storm’s eight-match winning streak with a 3-0 (25-14, 25-21, 25-14) straight-set victory at E.A. Diddle Arena in the WKU Volleyball Invitational.

“I always talk about there’s three levels of defenses in our game – there’s serving, there’s blocking and there’s floor defense – and to do the job we did today against St. John’s, you have to be pretty good at all of them and we were,” WKU head coach Travis Hudson said.

“ … We served it well, we blocked it well and we played good floor defense. That’s a good recipe to win.”

The victory was WKU’s third sweep in the event – it knocked off Ohio and Austin Peay on Friday – and marked its fourth straight-set victory since suffering its only loss of the season Sept. 10 against Ole Miss in the Holiday Inn-University Plaza Invitational on its home floor.

“Our team kind of hit a wall this week, and I think it was really important to prove to ourselves that we can turn to the next chapter right here,” WKU fifth-year senior Kayland Jackson said. “We know that conference play is the next chapter – just being able to lock in and find that togetherness and that fun that we have for this game so we can be prepared to go into conference play with a good mental (attitude).”

St. John’s (9-5) entered the match with eight straight wins, including victories over Austin Peay and Lipscomb in the weekend event, but WKU (11-1) weathered the Red Storm.

St. John’s came in hitting .248 as a team, but was limited to just a .032 hitting percentage in Saturday’s match. WKU had eight blocks to the Red Storm’s four and had a 32-23 advantage in digs. The Lady Toppers improved offensively as the match went on after operating at a .206 percentage against Austin Peay, and finished with a .390 mark Saturday.

Lauren Matthews had a match-high 12 kills, Jackson had nine and Paige Briggs and Katie Isenbarger had six each. Briggs and Isenbarger each added four blocks, Nadia Dieudonne had 28 assists and Kelsey Brangers had 10 digs.

“I think the best part (of the defense) was serving and coverage,” Matthews said. “Our servers did an amazing job tonight, and that’s what carried us through the whole game pretty much. They were driving the balls deep, switching it up, doing change of pace, making them move forward and that’s what really changed the game and let us control the other team offensively.”

WKU dropped the first two points in the first set, but reeled off five straight behind the serve of Ashley Hood to take a lead it wouldn’t surrender again. St. John’s got back within a point after a timeout but the Lady Toppers extended its lead to as many as 12 at 23-11 before closing the set 25-14. WKU held the Red Storm to a .000 hitting percentage and operated at a .292 clip offensively.

The Lady Toppers jumped out to a 6-1 lead early in the second set and never trailed, but St. John’s kept things close. The Red Storm tied the match 14-all with a 7-1 run and drew the match even again four times after a WKU timeout before a big swing from Briggs started a 6-2 run to close out the set 25-21.

“I was in that timeout when we let them close it back to a tie game 14-all and I kept stepping into the timeout and back out of the timeout without saying anything,” Hudson said. “All that was going through my head was, ‘Mom taught me if I don’t have something good to say, that I probably shouldn’t say anything,’ so we went through an entire 90-second timeout and I never said a word. It may have been the best timeout I’ve had with our team in a long time.

“If I want them to be positive, I have to try to limit the negativity myself. … Just trying to be intentional to create some positivity even in our struggles.”

St. John’s held an 8-5 lead in the third set, but WKU went on a 6-0 run behind the serve of Briggs and never looked back, taking the frame 25-14 and the match 3-0. The Lady Toppers hit .440 in the final set and held St. John’s to a .000 percentage.

Klara Mikelova and Rachele Rastelli led the Red Storm with 10 kills apiece and Tiziana Baumrukova had 17 assists. St. John’s is scheduled to travel to UConn next for a Sept. 25 match.

WKU now moves into play in a conference it has dominated since joining in 2014. The Lady Toppers aim to claim their seventh C-USA regular-season title in its eighth year in the league when it opens conference play Friday against Marshall at 6 p.m. in E.A. Diddle Arena. WKU will also face the Herd at noon Saturday.{&end}