Box Score
HOUSTON, Texas – Abilene Christian's season-best 19th block gave the Wildcats an 11-9 advantage late in the fifth set, but the lead and match quickly slipped away as Houston Baptist scored six of the last eight points to leave Sharp Gym with a hard-earned 3-2 victory Thursday night in Southland Conference action.
The Huskies (7-10, 2-3 SLC) won the first set, 25-23, but soon had to rally from a 2-1 deficit after dropping the second and third games by scores of 29-27 and 25-21. HBU won the fourth set convincingly, 25-15, in sending the Wildcats (5-8, 1-4 SLC) to their first fifth-set match since Aug. 31 vs. Louisiana Tech.
HBU and the Wildcats were tied four times leading up to the deciding moments of the fifth set, but then it appeared ACU would be on its way to victory after freshman
Dorothy Swanson scored consecutive points on a kill and block assist with classmate
Lexi Mercier, who was part of a whopping 12 blocks. But on the very next touch, sophomore
Jennifer Loerch committed her third service error of the match and Bailey Keith nailed one of her 11 kills to knot the score again at 11-11.
HBU grabbed the lead for good three plays later on an attack error by Swanson and Keith hammered the match-clinching point on Kayla Armer's 49th assist. The Huskies also played well at the net, totaling 13.5 blocks, one in which involved three players going up for a stop on Swanson near the end of the final game to set up match point.
Neither side hit incredibly well, however, as the Wildcats were held to a .098 percentage with 36 errors, while the Huskies hit .103 with 39 miscues. Loerch led all players with 20 kills, but was set up for the attack 69 times. HBU had four players finish with a double-digit kill total as Jessica Wooten (16 kills) and Keith (11) each attempted 50 or more attacks, while Caiti Wegner (16) and Madeline Gaffey (12) were given close to 40 chances.
Gaffney, along with Keith, combined to score the final three points of the first set after ACU had taken a short-lived 23-22 lead on a kill from sophomore
Corrie Reeder. HBU nearly gave itself a 2-0 lead after going up 24-21 in the second set, but the Wildcats clawed their way back into a tie game thanks to points from Loerch and
Erica Lambert.
From there the two sides traded the next six points in moving the score to 27-27. Loerch's kill gave her team the lead for good as Wooten followed with one of her team-high 10 attack errors.
Things couldn't get any better for the Wildcats in set three as they used an 8-0 run to lead from start to finish, but then they all but disappeared late in the fourth set as HBU scored 11 of the final 13 points right after ACU had closed its gap to 14-13 on consecutive kills from junior
Neely Borger and Loerch.
On the night, ACU and HBU were tied 36 different times and exchanged the lead on 24 occasions.
ACU concludes its two-match road trip Saturday at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, which tonight defeated Incarnate Word, 3-1, to improve to 9-7 overall and 4-1 against the league.
