By Steve Habel/Associate Editor
An international flavor was on display at Gregory Gym Tuesday night when the second-ranked Texas Longhorns volleyball team hosted Zhejiang, an upper-division Chinese club team, for the second consecutive night. The evening featured Chinese dragons manipulated by people and twisting and turning to the beat provided by a campus dance troupe and even a handful of fans chanting and rooting for the visitors from the East.
But what Texas coach Jerritt Elliott liked [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]the most was that his team was pushed to the limit before prevailing 20-25, 25-18, 21-25, 25-19, 18-16 before 2,079 fans.
When building the Horns’ 2104 schedule, Elliott added Zhejiang, a team made up of seasoned players aged 19-25, to the Longhorns’ mid-season grid to provide a little competition for his squad during the normally ho-hum Big 12 campaign.
What Elliott didn’t anticipate in the preseason was that the Longhorns would get swept by Oklahoma at home in the match immediately preceding Zhejiang’s visit. Or that his team would get lured into a false sense of security when Texas swept Zhejiang on Monday without five of his best players.
“We all knew (Zhejiang) was better than they showed on Monday, and we had to really fight to get this win tonight because they played better,” Elliott said. “We will learn a lot from playing as hard as we had to to win this match – you can’t duplicate the pressure of a match that goes down to 18-16 in the fifth set in practice.”
Five Longhorns starters who were suspended for Monday’s match for a violation of team rules – Khat Bell, Haley Eckerman, Chiaka Ogbogu, Cat McCoy and Chloe Collins – returned to the lineup Tuesday and, as expected, were among the team’s statistical leaders in Tuesday’s victory.
Outside hitter Amy Neal, who has played in 13 of the Horns’ 17 matches, missed her fourth consecutive match while she recovers from an injury.
Zhejiang put up quite a battle, capturing the first set when the Longhorns hit just .048 on 42 kill attempts. Zhejiang hit .258 and outblocked Texas 5-2, but the Longhorns made their share of mistakes, committing 11 hitting errors and three service errors. Texas never led in the opening set.
The Longhorns improved significantly in the second set, hitting .500 on 26 swings with just one hitting error. It took a while for Texas to shrug off the doldrums, as it earned its first lead of the match at 13-12. The Longhorns finished with a flurry, winning 12 of the set’s final 17 points and clinching the set on a kill by Eckerman, her sixth of the second set.
But just about everything that went right for the Horns in the second set went wrong in the third. With the score tied at 14-14, Zhejiang pushed past Texas by crowding the net and forcing the Horns to hit over and around its tall and solid blockers. More of Texas’ kill attempts found the net or out of the court and Zhejiang was poised for an upset.
Texas forced a fifth and deciding set with some stout blocking of its own and an infusion of energy from Paulina Prieto Ceram and Mirta Baselovic, who combined for five kills and two block-assists. Eckerman (who had a team-high 23 kills for the Horns) blasted three service aces in the set to give the Horns some life and some momentum.
The Longhorns return to Big 12 play on Sunday when they travel to Ames to battle Iowa State, who beat Texas in the 2012 season. The Horns’ have only four regular-season home matches remaining, the first on Friday, Nov. 7 versus Kansas State.
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