STEPHENVILLE, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi volleyball team was unable to earn its second straight win at the Tarleton State Invitational on Friday afternoon, playing a close match with Sam Houston but falling in straight sets, 23-25, 21-25, 19-25.
 
In contrast to what the final tally would indicate, the Islanders (1-5) would end up riding the momentum from their tournament-opening win against Denver the day before, starting off against the Bearkats (6-3) by jumping out to a 12-6 lead thanks in part to four kills from Ally Saleh and two from Kenna Buchanan and taking a four-point advantage into the media timeout. After this, however, Sam Houston started to slowly chip away, putting together its first run of the day and eventually taking the lead at 20-19. A&M-Corpus Christi responded with four of the next five points to put itself two points away from taking the set, but it could not finish things off, allowing four straight right after to go down 1-0.
 
The Bearkats would end up using this momentum to take an early lead in the next set, going up from the jump and eventually extending it up to 15-10 when the two teams went into their respective huddles. In a reverse from earlier, it was the Islanders that started to make their way back into things, mainly doing so on the service line with four aces of their own – three of which came all in a row from Kenrie Pruitt – and two errors on the other side. This run helped them knot things up at 17 apiece, but they could not keep it up after this, surrendering four in a row at one point and falling in the set by a mark of 25-21.
 
The beginning of the third was much more back-and-forth, with the two squads playing to eight tied scores before either hit double digits and never straying from within three points of each other until the Bearkats responded to a kill from Kaitlyn Aleshire and an ace from Tatum Mason with three straight points to make it a 20-16 game. The Islanders tried to climb back in from there, but they were unable to close this gap, handing them the defeat as a result.
 
A&M-Corpus Christi was paced in kills on the day by Saleh, who posted 14 to lead all players in the match for the second straight day. Ava Hight led the match in assists again with 28, and Buchanan pitched in with eight kills and nine digs herself. The one area where the Islanders got the best of the Bearkats was in aces, winning the category 9-4 thanks to the three from Pruitt and two apiece from Mason and Brooklyn Jaeger.
 
The Islanders will now wrap up the Tarleton State Invitational with a showdown with the host Texans, playing their last game in Stephenville at an adjusted start time of 2:30 p.m.
 
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