WKU Volleyball: Briggs, Dieudonne capture C-USA weekly honors

DALLAS – WKU Volleyball’s Paige Briggs and Nadia Dieudonne (jew-duh-nay) have been recognized by Conference USA as the Freshman of the Week and Setter of the Week, respectively, the league office announced Monday afternoon. The power tandem helped the Lady Topper squad to a second-straight perfect 4-0 week against Belmont and a tough WKU Volleyball Invite field.

Briggs collects her third Freshman of the Week nod from the conference in four weeks on The Hill. The rookie racked up 49 kills across WKU’s 14 sets of action to go along with 52 digs to lead the Red and White over the four-match span. Briggs added another double-double performance to bring her season total up to seven.

The Ortonville, Mich., native was nearly perfect is serve-receive in 59 targets across the week, making just one error. As a six-rotation player, Briggs averaged 3.50 kills per set and 3.71 digs per set to lead the Red and White in digs. Led by a career-high 23-dig showing against Northern Kentucky, Briggs registered a pair of outings with at least 13 digs across the week while hitting double digits three times in kills as well.

Earning her second weekly award of the 2019 campaign with the Setter of the Week nod, Dieudonne now owns half the league’s awards in the category this season.

The junior transfer tallied 143 assists as WKU dropped just two sets across the entire week. Dieudonne owned a 10.21 assists per set rate across the four matches. In WKU’s five-set victory over Northern Kentucky to open weekend play, Dieudonne came just one kill shy of a triple double as she filled the statsheet with 45 assists, 17 digs, nine kills, an ace and a .600 hitting percentage. The Louisville native added her second double double of the weekend in WKU’s three-set sweep of Samford, an NCAA Tournament team a year ago. Dieudonne averaged 1.07 kills per set, 10.21 assists per set, 2.64 digs per set and 1.43 points per set as WKU extended its win streak to nine.

With 41-percent of her sets finding the floor for kills by her teammates, Dieudonne led the Lady Topper squad to a .289 hitting clip on the week, including three outings of .350+. Dieudonne facilitated her teammate Lauren Matthews to a single-match program record .882 hitting percentage in Saturday night’s sweep of Samford. Matthews would finish with 15 kills on 17 errorless swings.

Through four weeks of weekly awards, WKU Volleyball has collected seven accolades with four different players earning recognition.