Four Clemson Volleyball Players Selected To 2006 All-ACC Teams

Nov. 28, 2006

GREENSBORO, NC – The Clemson volleyball team placed three players on the 2006 All-ACC teams and had two players earn ACC All-Freshman honors, as voted on by the league’s 12 head coaches and announced by the conference office on Tuesday. The Tigers finished the year with a 20-10 overall record and ranked third in the ACC with a 15-7 conference ledger.

Duke led all schools with four selections among the first and second teams and swept all three superlatives to become the first school to notch Player, Freshman and Coach of the Year honors. Clemson and Virginia both received three picks on the All-Conference teams, while Georgia Tech notched a pair of nods. Boston College, Florida State, Maryland, Miami, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest rounded out the teams with one selection apiece.

The ACC All-Freshmen Team highlighted six of the league’s top freshmen with players from Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Virginia and Virginia Tech.

Jeannette Abbott and Danielle Hepburn were first-team selections, marking the first time since the 1999 season that the Tigers have had multiple first-team honorees. Hepburn led the league with a .365 hitting percentage while also posting 1.71 blocks per game, a figure that ranked first in the ACC and fifth in the nation. The sophomore from Miami, FL recorded 370 kills on the year with 193 total blocks, including a Clemson single-season record 158 block assists.

Abbott, a native of Downers Grove, IL, led the Tigers with 497 kills on the year while also setting a school sophomore record with 1,405 attempts. Her 4.40 kills per game average ranked first in the ACC, and she also tallied 30 service aces, 272 defensive saves and 51 total blocks during the season.

Libero Didem Ege was a second-team All-ACC selection and was also named to the ACC All-Freshman team. The Istanbul, Turkey native recorded 544 defensive saves during the season, a mark that ranked third in Clemson history for a single season and set the freshman record for digs, bettering the previous statistic by 166.

Kelsey Murphy joined Ege on the All-Freshman team, as the pair’s selection marked the eighth straight year that a Clemson rookie has earned the accolade and just the second time that Clemson has placed more than one player on the squad. Murphy tallied 1,116 assists on the year to rank second on the all-time list for a freshman. The native of New Lexon, IL set a freshman record for assists in a single match with 73 against Maryland on Nov. 17 and ranked third in the ACC with a 12.07 assists per conference match average.