CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi volleyball team could not ring in its return to the Island with a victory on Friday evening, playing tight with UTEP throughout its first match of the Southwest Showdown, presented by Texas Army National Guard, but coming up short in four sets, 23-25, 26-24, 13-25, 24-26.
In a preview of how much of the night would play out, the Islanders (0-3) went back-and-forth with the Miners (3-1) in the opening set, trading the lead twice and playing to seven different tied scores before either team had even reached double figures. The first real run for either side came from the visitors, who ripped off six points in a row to open up a four-point advantage, the largest of the match to that point. The hosts responded to this beautifully with six straight points of their own and nine of the next 11 to wrestle the momentum right back, a stretch powered by a balanced attack led by the trio of
Ally Saleh,
Ava Hight and
Tatum Mason. Like before, though, the pendulum would end up swinging right back the other way, with UTEP scoring the final five points to secure the narrow set win.
This roller coaster continued out of the first break, starting with four straight UTEP points followed immediately by four straight A&M-Corpus Christi points on kills by
Hadley Burger and
Kenna Buchanan. The first real separation of the second set managed to come from the Islanders, who found a groove in the middle portion thanks to a hot stretch from
Kenna Buchanan and pushed their advantage all the way up to 23-17. A six-point Miners run ended up leveling the score despite this, but the hosts locked in during crunch time, taking home the final two points on kills from Burger and Buchanan to level the set count at one apiece.
This did not lead into a fruitful third set for the Islanders, though, as after a decent start to the third led by four more kills from Buchanan and three from Saleh, they ended up losing the rope to UTEP as time went on. This was the most apparent near the end, with the Miners ripping off an 8-1 run to close things out on what ended up being the only set on the day not decided by two points.
Even with this more lopsided score, the two teams went right back to a slugfest in the fourth, playing to a whopping 14 different tied scores by the time the final horn sounded. The first real run of this set came from UTEP with the score locked up at 16 apiece, with the visitors logging seven of the next 10 points to go up by a mark of 23-19. In one last gasp, the Islanders threw their own punch back at this point, getting a couple service errors, an ace from Buchanan and kills from Saleh and Hight to knot the count back up at 24. On the verge of forcing a decisive fifth set, they ended up running out of gas, surrendering the final two points and falling before they could try to compete the comeback effort.
The Islanders actually ended up on the positive side of the ledger in a few different areas, recording 60 kills against 52 from UTEP and 46 assists as opposed to just 44 on the other side. Where they were done in was their lack of clinical finishing on the attack, however, as they posted a hitting percentage of .229 with 24 errors as opposed to a mark of .341 with just eight errors in the same categories on the other end. Individually, Buchanan led all players in the match with 16 kills, and Hight had undoubtedly the best game of her career filling in for the injured
Virginia Van Der Werff, tallying 41 assists to more than double the next closest player while also chipping in 11 kills on 19 total attacks for good measure.
A&M-Corpus Christi now wraps up the weekend on Saturday afternoon, playing in the finale of the tournament against Texas State at 2 p.m.
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