Dieudonne & Matthews Earn C-USA Awards for Second-Straight Week

DALLAS – Following a 2-0 weekend at home against Middle Tennessee, WKU Volleyball saw a pair of Hilltoppers recognized by Conference USA for the second straight week. Nadia Dieudonne earned her fifth Setter of the Week honor of the season while Lauren Matthews collected the first Defensive Player of the Week of her career.

Dieudonne racked up 60 total assists to average 10.0 assists per set over the weekend while facilitating the Hilltopper offense to a collective .439 hitting clip. Dieudonne’s connection with her offense improved from game one to game two as her hitters connected for kills on 48.4 percent of her sets across the weekend.

The Hilltopper offense had their best showing of the season this weekend against the Blue Raiders, enabled by Dieudonne, who had back-to-back outings of 30 assists, while also adding hitting clip of .333 herself, hitting four kills, to go along with seven digs, four blocks and two aces.

Matthews racked up 31 total kills, hitting at a .725 clip, averaging 5.17 kills per set, while only committing two errors over the weekend. The middle hitter also averaged 2.50 blocks per set to help hold the Middle Tennessee offense to a combined .122 clip on the series.

On Saturday, Matthews struck for her second career double-double with 18 kills, hitting at .773 percent and 10 blocks. She is the only person to record a kills-blocks double-double in WKU program history, doing it for her second time. Matthews would turn in 39.5 points across the six weekend sets for an average of 6.58 points per set.

Monday’s award marks the 16th for Dieudonne across her three seasons at WKU. Additionally, this is Matthews first Defensive Player of the Week Award of her career and eighth weekly award overall.