BALTIMORE, Md. (Oct. 18, 2017)-The Morgan State volleyball team will look to build on the momentum of last Sunday's homecoming victory over Delaware State, when they travel to crosstown rival Coppin State on Friday, Oct. 20 for a Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) Northern Division contest at 7 p.m. at the CSU Physical Education Complex Arena.
 
Fans can follow all the action, which will be broadcasted on http://radio.securenetsystems.net/v5/CSU Fox Sports Williamsport and will also be streamed live on Coppin's UStream page.
 
Friday night's match, which will take place on the main arena floor, will be Coppin State's Dig Tish event named after Coppin State volleyball alumna Tish Madry, who was recently diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer and lymphoma.
 
The Lady Bears (3-15, 2-3 MEAC) are coming off a successful weekend, despite starting out with a heartbreaking 3-2 loss to visiting Maryland Eastern Shore (10/13). Playing in front of a Hill Field House record setting crowd of 2,548 fans to watch a volleyball match, Morgan State took a 2-1 lead over the division leading Lady Hawks. However, the Lady Bears were unable to seal the deal and fell to MDES in five sets.
 
Morgan State would regroup two days later for its homecoming match and swept Delaware State, 3-0 (25-15, 25-23, 25-20) on Sunday.
 
"It was definitely a tough loss playing against MDES, but really no time to sit and dwell on it when we're still working to finish on top," said Morgan State head coach Ramona Riley-Bozier. The only way to do that is take care of the opponent that's in front of you and it just so happened to be Delaware State. "I think we recovered, but we didn't play as well as I would have liked for us to play. But I'm glad that we got the victory."
 
Cristen Coryatt recorded a match-high 16 kills, eight digs and two service aces to lead Morgan State past Delaware State. Roi Wallace finished with a match-high 37 assists and nine digs, while Mykaela Ross had 10 digs, three kills and a match-high three service aces. Natashia Barker finished with a double-double of 10 kills and a match-high 18 digs, while Keana Browne added 10 kills and had a team-high .444 attack percentage. It was the second consecutive match and fifth double-double of the season for Barker.
 
"She's starting to come around," said Riley-Bozier of Barker's recent performances. "Definitely a slow start with Tasha [Natashia] dealing with post surgery and just not in the best of shape because of dealing with her knee surgery. We're starting to see a Tasha that hopefully this will continue and she will continue to keep playing as well as she's played offensively."
 
Riley-Bozier added, "we're just looking for an overall game from her. Hopefully she's turning the corner and if we can get offense and double-double's from her and everybody else, I feel like we can definitely have a shot to do some good things in the tournament."
 
As the season has gone along, Barker believes that her consistency and confidence is getting better and it's because of her mindset that she's been able to move past her surgery.
 
"I do feel like my consistency is getting better because my confidence is better," said Barker. I started to just trust the process and doing what I needed to do on my own to make sure my knee was strong enough to compete.
 
"There are two types of athletes: those who truly desire success and those who are trying to avoid failure. I truly desire success. The reason why people give up so fast is because they tend to look at how far they still have to go, instead of how far they have gotten. I've dealt with a knee surgery before, so I developed the mindset to just show up and play and that my knee is fine."
 
Coppin State (1-21, 1-4 MEAC) enters the Morgan State contest on a five-match losing skid heading into the Morgan State contest, following a 3-1 (22-25, 22-25, 25-21, 24-26) loss at home to Delaware State on Wednesday.
 
Stats were not available at the time of this release.
 
"Going into tomorrow's match we need to be discipline and humble ourselves. We cannot take Coppin lightly," said Barker. "We have to show up and play this game like it's our last because tomorrow is never promised."
 
Friday's contest will also conclude the first half of the conference slate and will be the 72nd meeting between the two Baltimore and MEAC rivals. Morgan State has won the past three match-ups and holds a commanding 61-10 all-time series lead over the Lady Eagles.
 
"We need to go there and end tomorrow being .500 in the MEAC if we want to solidify a descent position in the MEAC [Tournament]," said Riley-Bozier. "I know they had us picked to finish third, we were working to finish in the top two. So, we still have a lot of work to do and Coppin is one of those teams that we just need to go in there and play well and come out victorious."