The Lady Buffs won both of their Lone Star Conferences games this weekend against Texas Woman’s University and TAMU Commerce in The Box.
The first match had the Lady Buffs taking on a 15-5 Texas Woman’s squad. The match would go to four sets as the Lady Buffs would outlast the Pioneers 3-1. Junior Hallie Harton and sophomore Kameryn Hayes combined for 31 kills at 17 and 14 respectively.
The Lady Buffs carried the success over into the next day as they returned to The Box on Saturday to take on the 16-6 TAMUC Lions, who had won four straight matches before visiting. The Lady Buffs would sweep the Lions in three sets making short work of them in the first set 25-13. The Lions would test the Lady Buffs in the next two sets, but the Lady Buffs were too much for them as they won both, 25-17 and 25-19.
“Commerce did some good things, credit to them. But what’s upsetting is we did not have the right aggressive kind of mindset,” Head Coach Jason Skoch said. “We won and I don’t want to diffuse that.”
Blocking was a key component Saturday, as the team would combine for eight total team blocks.
“Actually it’s lot better than it has been,” Senior Lauren Beville said. “That’s one thing that we have been focusing on in practice a lot is spending a lot of time on our blocking. I think our blockers are showing lots of improvement especially on our outside blocking.”
The Lady Buffs had four players with eight or more kills on Saturday. Hayes led the team with 11 kills; senior Stormi Lancaster had 10 kills, with Harton and senior Erin Dougherty each having eight kills.
“Finishing games is another thing we have been working on in practice, and I think slowly we are getting better at trying to just putting them away as soon as we can” Beville said. “But every team we play, they play so hard against us that we have to make our stand against them and not let them even have hope, and sometimes we just let them have hope of getting back in there and having a chance to beat us.”
The Lady Buffs will return to The Box today to take on the Cameron Aggies. This will be the first meeting between the two teams this season and Skoch does not want his team to get comfortable.
“We haven’t seen film yet because we’re trying to not get ahead of ourselves, you know, but we have been watching scores and their record doesn’t show that, [they are] sort of like Commerce, I mean Commerce cleans up a few things, they could scare some people in the playoffs.” Skoch said. “And then that’s actually how Cameron looks because [they have] taken a set [every match]. I don’t think Cameron has been swept. [They have] taken at least a set off of every top team and other sets in there have been pretty close…so we better be careful.”
