SE Snags Set, But no Upset Against #18 ATU

DURANT, Okla. – Southeastern became the first Great American Conference team to take a set from No. 18 Arkansas Tech, but saw its bid for an even bigger upset fall short in a 3-01 loss on Saturday morning in Bloomer Sullivan Gymnasium.
 
The loss drops the Savage Storm to 5-15 overall on the year and 1-6 in GAC play.
 
"I'm super proud of the girls," said head coach Brianna Barry. "Knowing that Arkansas Tech is ranked we just wanted to come in and play great volleyball. We lacked in making adjustments and Arkansas Tech does that really well. They come in, sense a game and they react faster. Our youth hurts us in that they are set on one thing and they're not used to making those adjustments that fast, so that's a little tough. Overall, it's the cleanest volleyball we've played these last two matches, and they were both ranked teams."
 
"For us, that's huge," she continued, discussing being the first GAC team to take a set off ATU. "Going down 0-2 it was tough but we knew that we had nothing to lose. That third set, we we're like "we're just going to play volleyball", and that's definitely what we did. Hopefully the girls will learn from that, that we can take a set off of a ranked team. This is huge."
 
SE had a pair of double-digit hitters as Abby Jameson led all attackers with 17 kills on the match, while Arianna Baker added 10 in the effort. Jaclyn Menner was next up with seven.
 
Alissa Benson dished out 34 assists to trigger the offense while adding a pair of kills, two blocks and six digs.
 
Caitlin Cosby posted a match-high 20 digs on defense to lead the Storm, while Jameson added seven.
 
Baker turned in a team-best three blocks, while Benson and Caroline Griffith added two each.
 
The teams opened the match in a very even back-and-forth battle in the opening set, tying at 10-10 and SE trailed 15-14 when ATU used a 9-1 run to jump out to a 24-15 lead and would ultimately take set one 25-20.
 
The Storm rallied again in the second set and held a 16-14 lead, but again saw the Golden Suns use a big run, this one 10-1, to open up a 24-17 lead before taking the second set 25-18.
 
In the third set SE jumped ahead early, using a 5-1 spurt to take a 9-4 lead and holding off a pair of rally attempts and slowly pulling away for a 25-21 win in the set to close the match score to 2-1.
 
Unfortunately, the momentum did not follow the Storm to the fourth set ad a 6-0 ATU run opened up an early 8-4 lead for the visitors, and despite answering briefly and closing the gap to 8-7 the Storm was not able to get over the hump as the Suns pulled away for a 25-17 win in the clinching set.