Despite keeping up with the Longhorns in nearly every major category, the WVU women’s volleyball team fell three sets to none for the second night in a row.
The Mountaineers took a slightly different offensive approach in Friday’s match, as Lauren DeLo set freshmen middle hitters Maddy McGath and Emma Beretich more than on Thursday. The change paid off to an extent, with the duo totaling 12 kills and five errors in their combined 23 attacks.
Junior outside hitter Hailey Green took a slight back seat in the match, taking 29 swings for 14 kills compared to her average of 33.3 attacks per match. Sophomore outside hitter Bailey Miller was once again the most set Mountaineer with 32 attacks, but her efforts resulted in six kills and five errors compared to her 14 kills and five errors in 33 attacks on Thursday.
Unlike Thursday’s match, the Mountaineers and Longhorns were nearly identical in terms of errors and offensive statistics for the match, as Texas finished with 12 attack errors and 44 total kills while WVU tallied 15 errors and 42 kills.
When split set-by-set, though, the Mountaineers clearly lost momentum after the first set. By outdoing Texas in the first set with 17 kills compared to their 13 while maintaining one less attack error, West Virginia kept the set close before failing to complete the comeback and falling 25-23.
In the subsequent sets, Texas ramped up its offensive production to reverse the 17-13 kill count from the first set and outswing the Mountaineers 14-12 in the third set for a 25-17 victory in each. The Mountaineers cut their own hitting percentage in half from the first set, dropping from a .411 percentage to .211 in the second set and .176 in the third.
Texas, while not playing error-free by any means, kept a consistent hitting percentage in each set, with a slight boost in performance in the second set where they had 17 kills and three errors in 36 attacks for a .389 rate.
Similar to Thursday, the Mountaineers lost the remainder of their points in the match primarily in serving. Texas aced West Virginia seven times in the match, as six of which were from receiving errors. The Mountaineers also missed nine serves in the match compared to Texas’s three.
Without the consistent, error-free serving game Texas held, the Mountaineers found themselves stuck, even when the Longhorns struggled offensively.
With the loss, West Virginia dropped to a 2-11 Big 12 record and a 9-17 record overall while Texas improved to 18-3 on the season with a 13-0 conference record. The Mountaineers play their next match on Thursday, Nov. 9 away against Texas Tech.
