Natchitoches, La. – The Central Arkansas Sugar Bears and the Southeastern Louisiana Lady Lions opened the 2014 Southland Conference Volleyball Tournament in Natchitoches, Louisiana on Friday morning. The Sugar Bears came out of the gates firing, extending their winning streak in the SLC Tournament to seven matches with a 3-1 win over the Lady Lions.
Central Arkansas (19-10) opened the match with a 25-14 win in the first set, hitting .292 and delivering six service aces. The Sugar Bears extended their lead to 2-0 with a 25-16 win in the second set behind a .273 hitting percentage and five service aces. Southeastern Louisiana (11-18) cut the UCA lead in half with a 25-19 win in the third set, before the Sugar Bears locked up the victory with a 25-13 win in the fourth set, hitting .154 and adding another four service aces. On the day, Central Arkansas had 15 service aces and hit .195.
"Southeastern Louisiana is a very well-coached team," said Sugar Bear head Coach David McFatrich. "They made some changes in the third set at some key positions and it gave us a different look and it gave them a different tempo. We couldn't adjust fast enough, although we did gain some momentum at the end of the set. That momentum that we gained at the end of the game carried over to the fourth set, and we started the fourth set feeling a bit better about ourselves."
Junior
Heather Schnars
led the Central Arkansas offense, collecting 15 kills behind a .368 hitting percentage and adding 12 digs and two service aces.
Evie Singleton
tallied 12 kills, seven digs and five service aces, while
Amy South
turned in a match-high 41 assists to key the Sugar Bear attack. On the defensive front,
Shelbee Berringer
dug a match-high 15 attacks, while
Megan Nash
, who also collected five service aces, turned in a match-high five blocks.
The Lady Lions were led by Tiffany Thomas and Elizabeth Ramee, who each had eight kills, and Morgan Todd, who tied for the match-high with 15 digs.
"I think that a lot of coaches look at serving differently than we do," said David McFatrich after the match. But any time you have twice as many aces as errors, anybody in the world would love that. Evie got us off to a good start serving, Amy did a good job, Megan did a good job, and Heather had about three or four handcuffs that really helped us get the momentum."
The second-seeded Sugar Bears will take the court tomorrow morning at 11:00 AM against the winner of the first-round matchup between the third-seeded Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Islanders and the sixth-seeded Houston Baptist Huskies.
