Conway – The Central Arkansas Sugar Bears returned to action in the Prince Center on Saturday, hosting the Northwestern State Lady Demons. The Sugar Bears turned in one of their best all-around performances on the season, hitting .305 while limiting the Lady Demons to an .020 hitting percentage for a 25-15, 25-20, 25-16 sweep.

Central Arkansas (14-2, 3-1 SLC) took six of the match's first nine points, building a 6-3 lead to force a timeout from Northwestern State (6-12, 1-2 SLC). The Sugar Bears would get kills from Haley Tippett and Samantha Anderson out of the stoppage, before NSU used a 7-2 lead cut the UCA lead to 10-9. UCA would respond with a five-point streak, pushing the advantage to 15-9 and putting the set out of reach, cruising to a 1-0 lead with a 25-15 win in the set. Tippett led the Sugar Bears with five kills, while Emily Doss and Kelly Douglas each dug five Lady Demon attacks.

"We've been working on starting stronger, and I'm glad to see it starting to show in our match play," said UCA head coach Jeni Jones Chatman. "We do specific drills to help work on that, and we've seen improvement in those drills, but so see it in a game setting is the point, so I'm really pleased."

The second set saw the Sugar Bears grab an early 4-1 lead, but Northwestern State took the next three points to even the set at 4-4 and leading to a back-and-forth exchange before the Lady Demons got three-straight points to take an 11-9 lead. A 7-1 UCA run would put the Sugar Bears on top for good with a 16-12 lead. Northwestern State would pull to within a point, cutting the lead to 16-15, but a 5-1 run would push the lead to five points, where it would stay for the remainder of the set. Tippett again led the way for the Sugar Bears, adding eight kills to her tally, while Doss picked up six digs and Amanda Dimon added five.

The Sugar Bears had their most dominant performance of the day in the third set, building a 5-1 lead and never looking back, cruising to a 25-16 set win while never letting the Lady Demons closer than two points at 5-3. Tippett hit .750 in the set, getting six kills on eight swings, while the Sugar Bears got eight assists from Elizabeth Armstrong and six more from Bailey Waddington.

For the day, Tippett hit .342 while turning in a match-high 19 kills to go along with nine digs, and two blocks, while Abbie Harry and Anderson each added six kills. Armstrong handed out a match-high 28 assists and Waddington added nine. On the defensive front, Doss had a match-high 14 digs and Dimon chipped in with 12, while Alanna Bramwell and Anderson each had six blocks.

"Haley had a great night," said Chatman. "Something we've been working on with her is being more efficient, and to be a six-rotation outside hitter and hit .342 is phenomenal. I think two of her errors came from her back-row attacks, so I'm really proud of the way she played. Amanda's had a great week in the gym; her passing numbers have significantly improved. She's a kid that's an ultimate team player. She's had some struggles this season, but she had a great week and I told her that if we needed to make changes today, that I wouldn't hesitate to put her in."

The Sugar Bears return to the court on Thursday, hosting defending conference champion Texas A&M-Corpus Christi at the Prince. The match is set to begin at 6:00 PM.

"One of the things that we talk about with our team is that it doesn't matter who is on the other side of the net; it's more about controlling the things that we need to control," said Chatman. "It's about executing out offensive game plan, our defensive game plan, and out mentality. For the most part we've done a pretty good job of that this fall. It hasn't always been great, but most of the things we've done in practice to mix it up have put us in a position to handle those types of situations. Corpus is a good team, but so are we. I'm excited to see the progress we've made from last fall, through the spring, and into this season. We're excited to get back out there, work on some things we need to get better at, and put it all together on Thursday night."