MU volleyball falls to Texas

By Sam Wilson

Published Oct. 23, 2007

Saturday night brought back some memories for the MU volleyball team. The Tigers had the Hearnes Center crowd on its feet as they played a Top-10 team in the first game, similar to Wednesday's Nebraska match.

The Tigers' biggest lead of the game was 23-19, but the game was going back and forth.

The teams were tied at 30, forcing extra points. The No. 6 Texas Longhorns capitalized on two attack errors by sophomore outside hitter Megan Wilson to take the game 32-30, much like the way the Huskers pulled out a squeaker on Wednesday.

The Tigers were unable to rebound from the close first game loss, and the Longhorns took the next two games 30-17 and 30-22.

"I think it's really hard," sophomore setter Lei Wang said. "It's like you were just that close, but you just lost it. Energy-wise, it kind of hurts a little bit."

Freshman defensive specialist Shayli Meyer said the lull was somewhat of an aberration.

"Usually, we are pretty good at transitioning from one game to the next," she said. "We started off the second game a little bit slow, but we tried to come out the third game a little bit stronger because we knew that we weren't going to give up."

In the third game, the Tigers kept it competitive much of the way, trailing just 22-21 at one point.

But the Longhorns took over from there to win 30-22.

The Longhorns featured a dominant offensive lineup. Freshman outside hitter Juliann Faucette had 20 kills. Sophomore setter Ashley Engle and junior utility player Lauren Paolini had 11 and nine kills, respectively.

MU coach Wayne Kreklow said his team was forced to make Texas change its style, something it was best able to do in the first game.

"We don't have big physical hitters at the net right now except for her (senior outside hitter Na Yang)," he said. "The other hitters do things pretty well, but being physical is not what they do. And so if we put them into a situation where they have to rely on big physical skills, we're not going to win that battle. So, for us it's all about trying to make a team like that play a different tempo. At times in game one, we could do that."

The Tiger offense was somewhat one-dimensional. Coming into Saturday, Wilson had recorded double-figure kills in each of the past five matches. Against Texas, she was limited to six kills on a -.118 hitting percentage.

The match had an uncertain start time due to the football game against Texas Tech earlier in the day. But freshman defensive specialist Caitlyn Vann said that wasn't the reason for the loss.

"I don't think it had any effect on us," she said. "Regardless of what time it is, we have to play. We were prepared for that. It gave us more down time, I liked it."