The women’s volleyball team came into the Conference USA Championship as the eighth seed, with a record of 9-22 overall and 6-10 in the conference. Their opponent – Southern Miss – was the No. 1 seed and regular season champion, with a daunting 26-4 overall record and a 14-2 mark in C-USA.
Despite the disparity in records, the Cougars still had a puncher’s chance. The match had to be played, and neither team was going to back down.
The match was close for three sets, with the Golden Eagles holding a 2-1 advantage, before the Cougars imploded in the fourth set. Southern Miss fed off the Cougars’ mistakes and won the match 3-1 (19-25, 25-19, 20-25, 11-25), eliminating UH from the tournament.
Head coach Bill Walton said the problem was again consistency, something the Cougars have struggled with all year.
‘It’s an unfortunate ending, and I honestly believe that we had the athletic ability to win the tournament,’ Walton said. ‘But as you can see, we don’t have consistency and communication and that execution.’
‘You can see when we maintain the effort how good we can be, and you’ve seen it all year. We just aren’t able to hold it for a long period of time.’
The Cougars started off strong in the first set, but after a few missteps were playing from behind, a tough position against C-USA’s best team.
The Cougars led 6-5 before the Golden Eagles converted three consecutive kills. The Cougars would never regain the lead after that and the Golden Eagles pulled away to win by six.
In the second set, the Cougars again started off strong, and this time played one of their finest sets. Southern Miss did not go down easily, but the Cougars won the second by six points to even the match at one-all.
‘The key to winning the second set was that we blocked five balls and they blocked one,’ Walton said. ‘They had five hitting errors. We only hit one ball out of bounds. That’s the key to the game. You don’t hit the ball out of bounds, you block the other team, you don’t have any errors and you win the game.’
The Cougars appeared to carry that momentum into the third set. UH led 10-9, but the Golden Eagles swatted two pivotal blocks and never relinquished the lead to take a 2-1 match lead.
Those would be the most devastating blocks the Cougars would experience, as they put up only 11 points to end the match and a season filled with disappointment.
Walton said he was disappointed that seniors Alik Cardoso de Sa and Kinsey Cave couldn’t play with a team like last year’s 20-12 squad.
‘I feel bad that Alik and Kinsey didn’t get to play their last year with the team that we had last spring,’ Walton said
However, Walton said certain things couldn’t be avoided, such as injuries.
‘ ‘You can’t stop injuries,’ Walton said. ‘You (have) just got to do whatever with whatever hand you get dealt and just go with the flow, and that’s what we did.’
‘I couldn’t do anything differently and the team couldn’t do anything differently.’
