No. 3 Texas sweeps Kansas, 3-0
Kansas has eighth straight loss to Longhorns
Kansas volleyball fell to 11-15 and 4-12 in the Big 12 after their loss to Texas on Wednesday.
By Rustin Dodd (Contact)
Thursday, November 8th, 2007
Kansas might have nightmares about this Texas volleyball team. No. 3 Texas, winners of 14 straight matches, swept Kansas 3-0 (30-20, 30-19, 30-18) Wednesday night at the Horejsi Family Athletics Center. The Longhorns outplayed the Jayhawks in every facet of the match, and put on a performance worthy of its No. 3 ranking. Sophomore All-American Destinee Hooker led a sizzling Texas offense with 13 kills, and Texas dominated the net, outblocking Kansas 26 to four.
Photo by Jon Goering
Caitlin Mahoney, senior middle blocker/right side, and Natalie Uhart, senior middle blocker, jump to block a spike from a Texas hitter Wednesday night in the Horejsi Family Athletics Center. Texas swept Kansas in three games.
“They’re as physical as any group you are going to see,” senior setter Emily Brown, who finished with 11 kills and 17 assists, said.
Brown has been at Kansas for four seasons, and she could only find one word appropriate for Wednesday’s match.
“Dominance is a good word,” Brown said.
Texas finished with a .408 hitting percentage, compared with a .091 percentage for Kansas. Bechard said his team just wasn’t able to sustain anything against the bigger, stronger Longhorns.
“Against a team like this who might be playing as well as anybody in the country, you just can’t take a three or four point break,” Bechard said. “Because they’re too talented, they’re too experienced, they’re playing at an extremely high level right now. When you can hit over .400, and we we’re playing decent defense too, you know that it’s a team that is offensively on fire.”
Kansas fell to 11-15 and 4-12 in the Big 12, while Texas improved to 19-3 and 14-1 in the Big 12. The loss was also Kansas’ eighth straight loss against Texas. The Longhorns never looked out of their comfort zone, cruising to easy victories in all three games. Meanwhile, Kansas looked more and more rattled after every Texas block.
“Nothing gets in your head more than getting stuffed,” Brown said.
Despite the loss, freshman outside hitters Karina Garlington and Jenna Kaiser both registered seven kills each.
But the story of the match was Texas. The Longhorns have slowly crept into the National Title picture, and they made sure to keep Kansas at a secure distance the entire match.
“We were just so tentative, and I know we’re young, but we have to get past that,” Bechard said. “We’re 16 matches in to the Big 12 conference now.”
Kansas was coming off its best victory of the season, a 3-2 win against No. 18 Oklahoma, but Bechard said there was no way his team had a letdown. “We just knew we were up against a very hot opponent and we didn’t do the things we needed to do to get the results,” Bechard said.
Edited by Elizabeth Cattell
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