Category | Sports

Owls split with Nashville schools

Published on October 19, 2009 by John Morbitzer

KSU Volleyball (11-9, 6-7) fell to Lipscomb (18-3, 13-0) before winning Saturday against Belmont (10-11, 7-6) with Owl players wearing pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the “Dig Pink” event.

“Lipscomb is a very good team, and when you have a team with a lot of veteran experience, they don’t make errors at critical times,” said head coach Karen Weatherington.

The Owls stayed competitive throughout the first set, forcing the third tie of the match at 23, but could not score again and lost 25-23.

“It’s a mental thing. We need to stay in it mentally and keep teams from getting those runs on us. We had to take it one point at a time,” Sabrita Gulley said.

KSU could not keep the fight together in the second and third sets as Lipscomb played well and took away the Owls’ strengths.

Lipscomb held a 10-point lead in the second set that KSU whittled down to six, before the Bisons sealed the victory with an 8-0 run to win 25-12. The third set was more of the same with Lipscomb runs dominating the scoreboard. An early 6-0 run by Lipscomb increased the lead to eight, proving to be the final difference in a 25-17 final as the Owls lost in straight sets.

Asjia Stokes and Sabrita Gulley led with eight kills, and sophomore Rachael Albright led with a team-high 15 assists.

“We’re still a young team and still learning. I was really happy with a few things we did that I asked them to do, if we keep learning, we’ll continue to get better,” Weatherington said.

Saturday’s match in the KSU Convocation Center against Belmont showed the Owls are not going to relinquish their A-Sun standing easily with a hard-fought 3-1 set victory.

“We played incredibly hard from first serve until last point and that was the highlight of the day.  We really had a big test today because Belmont is such a good team,” Weatherington said.  “After the loss last night, I’m extremely proud of the effort the team put out today.”

KSU capitalized on Belmont mistakes in the fourth and final set, and played well to earn a victory.

KSU’s Sabrita Gulley made an outstanding individual effort, saving a Belmont point and turning it into an Owl point on a block, bringing KSU within one point at 20-19.

An attack error by Belmont tied the match before KSU took the lead three points later at 22-21. The Bruins scored three straight points to again take the lead at 24-23, before an Owl timeout.

In response, Asjia Stokes scored a kill to tie, but Belmont scored to force another set point. KSU then earned a match point, at 26-25 after two kills, and Belmont came back with two kills of their own, but committed an error to again tie the score at 27.

Trading points, the teams fought to a 29-point tie, before Belmont committed an attack error and Stokes put away a Belmont pass to end the match with a thrilling 31-29 victory.

“In a set like that, it can come down to who makes the last mistake, and thankfully for us, we were able to capitalize when Belmont made the mistake,” Weatherington said.

Chelsey Denesha led the team with 18 kills, as Gulley had 17 kills and 11 digs in the match. In the second set, senior libero Selina O’Leary registered her fifth dig of the match, giving her 1,000 for her KSU career.

KSU volleyball will travel to North Carolina Friday for a conference match against Campbell at 7 p.m., followed by a trip to Tennessee to face East Tennesee State University, Saturday at 6 p.m.