CANYON – All season, the ACU Wildcats played so that their NCAA post-season fate wouldn't be left up to the regional committee.
And all season it looked as if they would be the team to break West Texas A&M's four-year grip on the Lone Star Conference championship and the league's automatic bid to the regional tournament.
But those plans have gone up in smoke in the last two weeks as ACU lost the right to host the post-season tournament with last week's home loss against West Texas A&M, and then their fate was thrown up in the air Friday night with a shocking 3-0 loss to Angelo State in the LSC Post-Season Tournament semifinals.
ACU had handled the Rambelles twice the season (both by 3-0 scores) and after a 3-0 win over Texas Woman's on Thursday looked to be setting up a third straight match against West Texas A&M for the conference title.
But the Rambelles de-railed those plans and will instead advance to the conference tournament championship match. ACU ends its regular season at 26-5 and will now have to wait until Sunday evening to find out if it earns an at-large bid to the regional tournament.
The Wildcats were simply outplayed Friday by the Rambelles, who won the match by the scores of 25-18, 25-17, 28-26.
Angelo State hit a combined .308 compared to .191 for the Wildcats. ACU had 16 attack errors, five service errors, three reception errors and one of the nation's top blocking teams had just seven total blocks.
Jennie Hutt had 13 kills and four digs for the Wildcats, while senior
Shawna Hines had eight kills and six blocks against ASU.