Volleyball Falls to Stephen F. Austin in Five Games, 3-2
12/1/2006 12:00:00 AM | Volleyball
By Scott Latta
UA Media Relations
AUSTIN, Texas??After falling behind 1-0 and battling back to take a 2-1 lead, the Alabama volleyball team took 30-3 Stephen F. Austin into five games Friday in the first round of the NCAA tournament, but it wasn’t enough as the Tide eventually fell to the Ladyjacks, 3-2 in Gregory Gymnasium at the University of Texas campus.
With the loss, Alabama will end its season with a 17-13 record.
“I think the first thing is that I’m really proud of our effort tonight,” Alabama head coach Judy Green said. “We played a great team and we knew that coming into the match. We knew it would be a hard fought match. We wanted to earn every point we got and I think we just came up on the short end of the stick.”
Despite the outcome, Alabama got a record-setting performance from sophomore Amy Pauly. The Illinois native broke her previous school record of 35 digs, which she set earlier this season against Kansas State, with 39 in Friday’s match.
“[Amy]’s grown a tremendous amount this season and tonight she outdug one of the top six defensive players in the nation, and as a team we outdug the third-ranked defensive team in the country,” Green said. “Knowing that makes it a little difficult to swallow knowing we played that great of defense but just need to be a little better offensively tonight.”
After battling even for much of the first two games, the Tide and Ladyjacks went to intermission tied 1-1. Alabama fell behind 0-4 and was down 2-8 in game one, but rallied back and despite taking a brief 18-17 lead, Alabama couldn’t hold on and eventually fell 30-24.
In the second game, Alabama grabbed the early lead and with the score tied 23-23, the Tide ended the game on a 7-0 run, taking the game 30-23 to even it 1-1 at the break.
Alabama grabbed a 2-1 lead in the second half when the Crimson Tide took game three 30-25, battling through 13 ties and six lead changes for the win. Though Alabama had a chance to put away Stephen F. Austin??who was riding a 25-match win streak??in game four, the Ladyjacks came back down 17-16 and ended the match on a 14-5 run to take game four 30-22 and force a decisive fifth game.
In the final game, Stephen F. Austin jumped out to the early 5-0 lead and though the Tide drew to within three at 13-10, the Ladyjacks never lost their lead on the way to a 15-11 win, taking the match 3-2 and advancing to play the winner of tonight’s Texas-Prairie View A&M match tomorrow afternoon.
“We got a little too far behind at the beginning of the fifth game and Stephen F. Austin came at us and never stopped coming,” Green said, “but I think if we’d gotten off to a faster start and played a little bit closer in the fifth game it probably could have turned out a little different story.”
Alabama recorded 57 kills in the first four games and was lead by Texas native Bridget Fuentez, who recorded 22 kills, nine digs, and attempted 72 attacks on the night. Alabama had three other players in double figures in kills Friday??freshman Brooks Webster, junior Crystal Hudson, and senior Rachel Green.
Though she converted .393 percent of her attack attempts on the season, Hudson was held to just .171 percent Friday.
“It was hard because I was having a hard time doing what I normally am used to doing,” she said. “I was trying to move the ball around more, but it just wasn’t working for us.”
This was Alabama’s second time to play in the NCAA tournament in as many years and only the second time in school history. Last year Alabama also fell in the first round of the tournament to the Ohio Bobcats.
