Conway – The Central Arkansas Sugar Bears returned to Southland Conference play on Thursday night, welcoming the Abilene Christian Wildcats to the Prince Center. After dropping the first set, Central Arkansas rallied, taking the next three sets to win the match 3-1.
Central Arkansas (5-9, 1-1 SLC) struggled to find a rhythm in the first set, trailing by as much as 11 before rallying late. The rally would come up short though, as the Sugar Bears hit just .043 and fell 25-18.
Abilene Christian (0-14, 0-1 SLC) and the Sugar Bears traded points throughout the second set, but UCA took advantage of eight kills from senior
Heather Schnars and upped their attack percentage to .297, evening the match at 1-1 with a 26-24 victory in the set.
The third set would prove to be all Central Arkansas, as the Sugar Bears forced seven attack errors and five service errors while committing just three total errors of their own to cruise to a 25-12 win and a 2-1 lead in the match.
The Sugar Bears controlled the fourth set as well, outhitting the Wildcats .296 to .000 and getting six blocks to take the set 25-17 and the match 3-1.
"I think we started out a little slow, with a lot of unforced errors," said Central Arkansas head coach Jeni Jones. "Once we cut out those errors and started forcing them to the other side of the net, that was huge. Just in the first set, we surrendered almost an entire set of unforced errors between our service errors, our serve receive, our attack errors, and just errors based on lack of communication. We talked about that during the break, and cutting those down was key for us."
On the night, the Sugar Bears were led by Schnars' match-high 22 kills, while sophomore
Megan Nash chipped in 12 kills on a .455 attach percentage and senior
Amy South dished out a match-high 41 assists. Freshman
Nicole Peters, making her first start, tallied six kills and three blocks on the night. Defensively, freshman
Allie Kemp had a match-high 19 digs, and fellow freshman
Samantha Anderson picked up four blocks.
"Allie had some really key digs for us," said Jones on the play of her freshman libero. "Something we've been working on with her is making sure that she puts herself in a position on the floor, regardless of what's happening with the block or anything else, where she can dig balls, and she did that tonight."
"We're fired up for Nicole to get her first start, and for her to take advantage of the start," continued Jones. "We finally got to incorporate her and Megan [Nash] into our attack."
The Sugar Bears take the court again on Saturday, playing host to the Incarnate Word Cardinals at noon. "Incarnate Word is a scrappy, scrappy team," said Jones of Saturday's opponent. "They play great defense, they're really well-coached. In fact their coach was my setter for two years when I played at Florida, so I hate having to coach against her, but we know that they're going to come in here prepared and ready to go."
