SFA Tripped Up By Hot-Hitting NSU in Three Sets
10/13/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
Northwestern State 3, Stephen F. Austin 0 (25-18, 25-14, 25-19)
Records: SFA (13-10, 5-2 Southland), Northwestern State (4-17, 2-6 Southland)
Up Next: at Southeastern Louisiana (8-11, 2-3 Southland) • Thursday, Oct. 15 • 7:00 p.m.
NATCHITOCHES, La. – On paper, all of the numbers and statistics for the Stephen F. Austin/Northwestern State volleyball match were skewed heavily in favor of the visitors.
Once the actual match commenced, however, the Lady Demons threw the numbers out the window and flipped Thursday night’s script on its head.
SFA struggled to get its offense off the ground, producing its single-match attack percentage of the season (.103) while NSU flourished in all phases of the game en route to a 3-0 victory over the Ladyjacks at Prather Coliseum.
“Our execution as just poor in all phases of the game,” said SFA head coach Debbie Humphreys. “It wasn’t an energy issue, we just couldn’t execute to save our lives. Then it got to a point where we couldn’t get anything going and we started to try too hard which made things worse."
The execution SFA lacked was something the Lady Demons had in spades as the hosts connected on 46 of their 106 attack attempts and committed 11 errors compared to the Ladyjacks’ 19 for a hitting percentage of .330. In the all-time series between SFA and NSU, the Ladyjacks now own a 46-5 lead and all five of the Lady Demons’ victories have come since the 2012 season.
Prior to Thursday night, the last Southland Conference team to defeat the Ladyjacks 3-0 in a regular season match was Central Arkansas who accomplished that feat in Nacogdoches on Oct. 29, 2013.
Junior middle blocker Justice Walker served as one of the lone bright spots for SFA as she pounded down a team-high nine kills to go along with three digs, a solo block and a block assist.
One of just two leads the Ladyjacks’ owned throughout the night came during the inaugural point of the match when Lauren Agan committed an attack error. From there, however, Agan slammed down a quartet of terminations as part of a 7-1 NSU run which put the home team in front for good.
SFA was able to slice in to its 22-14 deficit with a 4-0 run consisting of a pair of Lady Demon miscues, Walker’s solo rejection and a kill from McKenzie Brewer, but NSU took set one by notching three of the final four points in the frame.
Just as they had done in the opening frame, SFA grabbed the lead in set two thank to a Lady Demon error, but it would be one of just 14 points the visitors could muster in the set. NSU hit a match-high .379 in the middle frame to take a 2-0 lead in the conference bout.
Aiming to end things in three sets, Amanda Kunz struck for a pair of kills during a 5-1 NSU scoring surge to begin the final frame. The Lady Demons’ unrelenting attack continued until the scoreboard read 21-12 in favor of the home team, but Walker started a 6-2 Ladyjack run with a kill. Haley Coleman added a pair of her own while Tori Bates and Shannon Connell each chipped in one during the run, but the deficit was just too much for SFA to overcome in the end.
“The first sense of urgency I felt was when we were down 21-12 in the third set,” said Humphreys. “We finally started to execute, but by then it was just a case of too little too late.”
Agan connected for 12 NSU kills while her teammates Amanda Kunz and Caitlin O’Connell each registered 10 on attack percentages of .450 and .625 respectively.
Eying a return to the Southland Conference win column after falling to third place in the league standings, the Ladyjacks travel further south to Hammond, La., for a Thursday night encounter with Southeastern Louisiana State. SFA will do battle with the Lions at 7 p.m.
-SFA-
