Seeing as how it was the last weekend of the regular season, it was only fitting for the UH volleyball team to play as long as it could, going the distance with Tulsa and Southern Methodist.
Against Tulsa on Sunday, UH used good passing and a balanced-hitting attack to defeat the Golden Hurricane (30-24, 23-30, 26-30, 30-25, 15-9) in its regular season finale.
It was the first time all season that the Cougars had four players record double-digit kills in the same match. Sophomore outside hitter Ashley Calhoun notched a career-high 17 kills on a team-best .406 hitting percentage.
"The passing in the last couple of games was great and it was able to set us up for some good shots," Calhoun said. "After the third game we all just came out and wanted to fight harder than them."
After forcing a fifth game, the Cougars wasted little time jumping on Tulsa (24-8, 11-5 Conference USA) and went up 6-0 after a kill by junior setter Kelsey King.
Junior outside hitter Justine Farmer recorded three of her match-high 28 kills in the fifth game and had 23 digs for her 18th double-double of the season.
"The last couple of weeks we haven’t really been playing too well, so we wanted to take it out on them," Farmer said. "I think we really showed that in the last game."
The freshmen came up big for UH. Middle blocker Lucy Charuk and outside hitter Hannah Sullivan had 13 and 12 kills, respectively, while libero Amanda Carson recorded a career-best 35 digs.
The Cougars were not as fortunate Friday night as they fell to an SMU team (30-23, 24-30, 27-30, 30-28, 17-15) that they had swept in Dallas earlier in the season.
But after four games and 248 combined points, nothing had been decided. With the score knotted up at 15-15, UH chose the wrong time to start making miscues.
Consecutive hitting errors gave SMU (16-13, 6-9) the victory. SMU senior outside hitter Caitlin Rainbird led all players with 23 kills.
The Cougars will leave Tuesday for the C-USA tournament in Huntington, W. Va.
