JACKSONVILLE – With just two weeks remaining in the Ohio Valley Conference volleyball season, Jacksonville State prepares for an important home weekend hosting Tennessee State and Belmont.
 
The Gamecocks (17-15, 5-7 OVC) sit a game behind Belmont (6-6 OVC) and in a tie with TSU in the league standings. JSU beat Belmont, 3-1, earlier this season on the road for their first win over the Bruins since 2003. In the same road trip, Jax State fell 3-2 to Tennessee State in late September. After a recent slide, the Gamecocks hope returning home, where they're 10-4 on the season, will put them back on the right track.
 
Murray State leads the conference with a 12-1 mark and sits poised to win the regular season crown and host the OVC tournament for a third-straight year. In the closing weeks of the season, JSU aims to return to the tournament for the second time in three seasons.
 
JSU hosts Belmont Friday night at 7 p.m. inside Pete Mathews Coliseum. Admission is free and the JSU Student Government Association has tabbed the game "Spirit Night" and promoted the contest as a White-Out. The Bruins enter at a surprising 6-6 mark after reaching the NCAA Tournament last season. Junior Arianna Person is among the top offensive players in the league, while junior Ellie Ivancich is just as strong on the defensive side.
 
JSU's win over Belmont last month snapped a 10-match losing streak to the Bruins, after JSU had won the first eight ever meetings of the series from 1997-2003. While the Gamecocks still trail the Belmont series, 10-9, they hold a commanding 21-10 series advantage against Tennessee State.
 
First serve against the TSU Tigers is slated for 2 p.m. on Saturday. TSU enters the weekend on back-to-back wins and looks to capitalize on Saturday's match facing a team so close in the standings. Freshman Payten Clark's .306 hitting percentage is among the leaders for OVC games. The Tigers are led defensively by libero Cherlie Adorno-DeJesus who's won conference Player of the Week honors three times this season.
 
For the Gamecocks, junior Allyson Zuhlke's team-high 373 kills and .291 attack percentage paces the offense. Behind Zuhlke, freshmen Sadie Anderson, 221 kills and 208 digs, and Kaylee Frear, 247 kills and 117 blocks, have played key roles for Jax State in their first year on campus. Junior Charis Ludtke's 239 kills and sophomore Mackenzie Rombach's 213 kills gives JSU five players with more than 200 kills for the first time since the 2009 campaign.
 
Rombach, however, has made her mark on the defensive side of the net leading the nation with 151 total blocks, now just three shy of tying the school's Division I single-season record. Frear (117) and Zuhlke (99) follow the Ottawa, Ill. native in team blocks. Junior Hannah Kirk's 440 digs leads the Gamecock back row, and ranks fourth-most by a player in the OVC. Freshman setter Rachel Perucki is second behind Kirk with 229 digs.
 
Live stats wil be available for both Friday and Saturday's matches. Following this weekend's home action JSU will host Tennessee Tech on Tuesday night at The Pete, before hitting the road for the regular season finale at UT Martin on Nov. 11.