MOBILE, Ala. ? The University of South Alabama women’s volleyball team was swept 3-0 (30-24, 30-10, 30-20) Saturday night in the final match of the 2006 Jaguar Classic held at Jag Gym.  With the victory and a 3-0 tournament record, Auburn (8-3) captured the tournament team title.

“If I think about our overall weekend, I am very pleased,” said South Alabama head coach Nicole Keshock.  “We had the situation right where we wanted it going into tonight’s match being 2-0 in the tournament.  I feel that we didn’t play with the same confidence that we did in the first two matches of the tournament.  The most disappointing thing is that we didn’t play the way that we had the previous two matches.  We have some things to work on in practice this week and we will be ready to go next weekend.”

USA (4-5) will return to action when it travels to Birmingham to compete at the Loco’s Invitational hosted by Birmingham Southern, Sept. 15-16.  The Jags will open up tournament play on Friday when they face Birmingham Southern at 7 p.m.

In the opening game of the match, the two clubs came out and were close early on.  After a Jenna Swilley kill and a Tiger error, USA held an 11-7 advantage.  The South Alabama lead was short-lived as Auburn reeled off nine unanswered points to take a 17-11 lead.  USA was able to trim the deficit to three on a couple of occasions, but could not draw any closer.  Whitney Jacobs gave the visiting Lady Tigers the 30-24 victory with a kill.

Holding a 1-0 match lead, Auburn came out in the second game and dominated from the outset.  The Tigers, led by four Jessica Glover kills, raced out to a 14-1 lead and never looked back.  The Auburn run included a 12-0 scoring spurt.  Glover capped off the dominate performance with another put away to give the Tigers the 30-10 victory.  In game two, Auburn was on fire, recording a hitting percentage of .531 in game two.

Like in the second game, Auburn jumped out to a quick 7-1 lead.  The Jags, however, responded this time to the Tiger spurt by taking eight of the next 12 points to cut the deficit to 11-9.  Auburn did not allow the Jag women get any closer and quickly pushed the lead back out to 17-11.  The Tigers went on to take game three 30-20 and capture the match 3-0.

For the match, the Tigers out hit USA .351 to -.078.  Swilley led South Alabama offensively with nine kills, while Glover and Rachel Shanks finished in double figures with 15 and 14 kills, respectively.

On a positive note, Swilley was named to her second consecutive all-tournament team.  For her play this weekend, Shannon VanAntwerp was also named to the all-tourney squad along with Melissa Jones (Southeastern Louisiana), Sheridan Stanghor (Samford), Whitney Jacobs (Auburn) and Joanna Pappas (Auburn).  Rachel Shanks was named the tournament MVP.