By Steve Habel/Associate Editor
Don’t try to sell the Texas volleyball team the bill of goods that says West Virginia is one of the bottom-three teams in the Big 12 Conference.
The Mountaineers might have only [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]three wins in league play but it took all the fifth-ranked Longhorns could muster, especially in the first set, to beat West Virginia 25-20, 25-17, 25-18 on Wednesday before a crowd of 2,306 at Gregory Gym.
The Longhorns’ win, their 13th sweep in 19 match-wins this season, was much tougher than the stats show. And the victory came by way of a season-best performance by senior outside hitter Haley Eckerman.
Eckerman, the two-time defending Big 12 Conference player of the year and a first-team All-America the past two seasons, hit .533, had 18 kills and four service aces, accounting for 22 points, nearly a set all by herself. Eckerman’s hitting percentage was her best of the season while her kill and overall point totals were her best this year in a three-set match.
“You win championships when your stars step up and play well,” Texas coach Jerritt Elliott said about Eckerman. “The last few days, she’s really worked hard on getting her feet to the ball and getting on top of it. I think there’s a direct correlation to that and what happened here tonight.”
The Longhorns (19-1 overall and 11-1 in league play) racked up a .512 attack percentage, its highest since beating Colgate in the NCAA playoffs during their national championship campaign in 2012.
The first time these two teams played, in the conference opener in Morgantown on Sept. 24, West Virginia took the first two sets from Texas before the Longhorns rallied to dominate the final three, including a 15-7 win in the deciding fifth set.
Perhaps the Mountaineers took some momentum from that first meeting but that was quickly erased as Texas finally found its stride after a close first set. West Virginia (13-13, 3-9 in league play) stayed close to Texas in the early going until Eckerman took charge.
With the Longhorns up 21-20, she ripped a kill (one of five she racked up in the opening set) and back-to-back aces to create some breathing room. Amy Neal sealed the opening-set win for Texas with a solo block. The Longhorns hit at a .355 clip in the first set and held the Mountaineers to a .194 attack percentage.
Eckerman said she was able to exploit a changing West Virginia defense and her ability to leap high and hit over or around the Mountaineers’ block attempts.
“The biggest thing is that West Virginia was playing a different defense every time, and the sets were great,” Eckerman said. “A lot of times their libero was in a different spot each time I was hitting.”
The second set started as a nip-and-tick battle as well and featured seven tied scores and one lead change. Texas won the set’s first two points but West Virginia took a 10-9 lead on a kill by Hannah Shreve.
The Longhorns responded with four straight points, three of them on kills by Eckerman, and eventually pushed its advantage to 19-13 as Neal, Khat Bell and Eckerman nailed kills that hit the hardwood. Texas finished off the Mountaineers with a final 5-1 run, with the winning point coming on a down-the-line smash from Paulina Prieto Cerame.
Neal added nine kills and a game-high 16 digs for the Longhorns. Prieto Cerame had seven kills for Texas and Cat McCoy had eight digs.
The Longhorns return to action Saturday when they travel to Oklahoma, the only team to beat them this year.
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