Volleyball struggled with cohesiveness as they fell to San Jose State on Friday night. | Courtesy of Juan DeLeon
After falling in a heartbreaker to San Jose State University 3-2 earlier in the day, the volleyball team dropped two in a row for the first time this season when they fell 3-0 (13-25, 17-25, 18-25) to the Houston Baptist University Huskies Friday night.
“We got outworked in every category,” Head coach Kaddie Platt said. “We beat ourselves tonight.”
Not much went right for the Cougars, and it started early in the first set when they fell behind as many as 13 and spent two timeouts en route to a 25-13 loss. After falling behind quickly, the Cougars tied the game 5-5 before the Huskies went on a 12-2 run and scored 20 of the final 28 points of the set.
Communication looked to be a big concern for UH as they had players nearly colliding on many of the volleys, while HBU scored multiple points when the ball fell perfectly in the hole between two Cougars.
“We have a lot of young people on the court and their confidence, or lack thereof, shows up in tight situations when they need to relax the most,” Platt said.
Things didn’t go any better for the Cougars in the second set as another 10-3 run by HBU created a gap that UH was unable to overcome. The Cougars scored 12 kills to HBU’s five, but 10 errors doomed the team.
“They just played a little harder than we did in the long volleys,” Platt said. “There was one game we had out-killed them 12-5, but we had also given them so many points with errors.”
The Huskies outhit the Cougars .241 – .018 for the match, forcing UH into 27 errors against only 29 kills while only hitting into 10 errors themselves.
The Cougars played better in the decisive third set, hitting into only five errors, but the Huskie offense was too overpowering, hitting .359 with 17 kills against three errors in the set. Overall, the Huskies beat the Cougars in every statistical category, forcing them into their first 0-3 loss of the season.
“Hopefully a night’s sleep will help and we’ll get back into the film room tonight and look at (University of Louisiana)-Monroe and set all of our targets on them,” Platt said.
The Cougars return to action Saturday afternoon in the final match of the Flo Hyman Collegiate Cup in the Athletics/Alumni Center. The game is scheduled to start at 3 p.m.
