Natchitoches, La. – The second-seeded Central Arkansas Sugar Bears took the court against third seed Texas A&M-Corpus Christ on Saturday morning. After taking a pair of close victories in the first two sets, the Sugar Bears rallied to take the third, ending the match on a 15-2 run to advance to their third Southland Conference Tournament finals in four season.
Central Arkansas (20-11) and TAMCC (19-16) played an incredibly competitive match, with neither team able to build a lead larger than three points over the first two sets. The Sugar Bears built a 2-0 lead by taking each of the first two sets by identical 26-24 scores. The Islanders built a 19-10 lead in the third set, before the Sugar Bears went on their incredible run to take the third set 25-21.
"Our girls showed incredibly heart today," said Central Arkansas head coach David McFatrich of the Sugar Bear run. "When you're down 19-10 there's almost no chance that you can win. But we hung in there, I think we had really good energy, and we had a really good server back there. We got a couple of points out of the timeout, which mushroomed into four points, and after the second timeout we got another five or six and, next thing you know, we're winning 21-19 and after that it's like 'Wow, we're getting ready to swing for the match.' I was really proud of the way our girls kept fighting, because we've had third set issues this year, but they fought hard today."
Central Arkansas hit .272 on the day, led by
Fulani Petties and
Megan Nash who turned in attack percentages of .360 and .357, respectively.
Heather Schnars tallied a match-high 16 kills, while Petties added 11 and
Evie Singleton chipped in with nine.
Amy South was a two-way force for the Sugar Bears, dishing out 43 assists to key the Central Arkansas attack and digging nine attacks on the defensive front. Singleton dug a match-high 11 balls, while
Shelbee Berringer added 10 digs. At the net, Nash picked up two solo blocks and
Alicia Dittrich added one of her own to help Central Arkansas hold the Islanders to a .163 hitting percentage.
"A lot of people talk about our offense, but our defense was rock-solid today," said McFatrich. "They were in the right spots, they stayed on their assignments, and they made the adjustments when they needed to. I was really tickled with how they played defensively, and you have to have that if you want to win this tournament and go to the NCAA tournament. You have to play both sides of the ball, and I thought we did an outstanding job of that today."
Brittany Gilpin was the only Islander to record double-digit kills on the day, tallying 11, as Kristyn Nicholson dished out 32 assists. Defensively, Kate Klepetka had 10 digs and Brianna Brink had a pair of blocks.
The Sugar Bears will play in the championship match tomorrow afternoon at 2:05 PM against the winner of this afternoon's semifinal match between top-seeded Stephen F. Austin and fifth-seeded Northwestern State.
