ABILENE - Abilene Christian volleyball blocked 16 shots and held McNeese to a .079 hitting percentage in its 3-1 comeback victory over the Cowgirls Thursday night at Moody Coliseum.
The Wildcats dropped the first set 27-25, but rallied to win the next three by scores of 25-17, 25-23, 25-23 in improving to 5-22 overall and 3-10 vs. the Southland Conference. McNeese, meanwhile, dropped to 14-15 and 4-9.
Seven of the Wildcats' blocks came in game four with sophomore middle blocker
Lexi Mercier responsible for one solo effort and six assists. The last of Mercier's blocks won the match, as she and junior
Jennifer Loerch hammered back Carly DeMarque's attempt with the Wildcats' clinging to a 24-23 lead.
ACU led the Cowgirls through the early stages of game four and grabbed its largest lead at 16-11 on Mercier's solo block, which forced McNeese to burn a timeout. The Cowgirls got a point coming out of the break and benefitted from an attack error by Loerch, but couldn't capitalize further as Amber Fryer twice hit the ball right into Mercier and junior setter
Sarah Siemens.
Loerch added another kill to push ACU's advantage back to four points at 19-15, but that lead was quickly cut in half on consecutive errors made by seniors
Taylor Nix and
Neely Borger.
And after ACU took its timeout, the Cowgirls cut their deficit to one point (19-18) on a block from Shelby Poehls and Rachel Cagnina and tied it a few possessions later when
Erica Lambert hit the ball wide of the sideline.
The Wildcats scored the next two points on a Loerch kill and McNeese error, but more importantly did not allow the Cowgirls to string together any rallies even though they clawed back to within a point three times down the stretch.
After a kill by
Dorothy Swanson made it 24-22, DeMarque blocked Loerch and then Loerch (with Mercier) returned the favor for the match-winning point.
Loerch finished the night with a team-high 16 kills and dug out 11 of the Cowgirls' 164 attacks. She also had three block assists and one of ACU's five aces.
Nix was second on the Wildcats with 10 kills and hit .263 with many of the assists coming from sophomore
Tucker Smith, who finished the night with 25. Siemens, meanwhile, recorded 16 assists, and 3.5 blocks
Sophomore libero
Brooke Ray had the most digs of anyone tonight with 29, followed by Loerch's 11 and
Nicole Morales' 10.
For the Cowgirls, they were led by Cagnina's 18 kills and .244 hitting percentage. Malina Sanchez had a double-double of 10 kills and 14 digs, but the league's top team in terms of service aces only had four tonight with two coming from Cagnina.
With the match tied at 1-1 following ACU's dominant second-set performance, game three featured some major lead changes early on as a Cowgirls' rally from a 4-0 deficit was later followed by a 11-6 Wildcat run that tied the score at 17-17. The two sides battled through four additional deadlocks before the Wildcats went ahead for good on a Nix kill that brought ACU to match point at 24-23.
Morales delivered the game-winning point on a service ace that grazed the knuckles of McNeese libero Adison Giambrone as she dove toward the middle of the end line.
Game one simply slipped away from the Wildcats despite the fact that they flipped a 14-9 deficit into a 24-22 lead. But after reaching set point on a kill by Nix, the Wildcats surrendered four of the final five points to the Cowgirls.
Mercier tied the score one final time at 25-25 with on of her three kills, but McNeese setter Kelly Graham quickly assisted on back-to-back points from Amber Fryer and DeMarque. Graham recorded 39 of her team's 44 assists.
The Wildcats return to action Saturday at 11 a.m. vs. Nicholls. The match time was moved up to not conflict with the 2 p.m. football home finale vs. Northwestern State.
