Junior libero Gabi Maas said that Wichita State volleyball’s season-opening loss to Kennesaw State was far from a defining moment for the Shockers’ season.
“We’re going to push through our challenges,” Maas said.
After a day of rest, scouting reports and walk-throughs, Wichita State responded with a five-set win over Arkansas on Sunday afternoon, (25-18), (25-13), (25-19), (25-21), (15-6), in its second and final game of the Shocker Volleyball Classic.
“A team with a lot of firepower, we outscored them,” head coach Chris Lamb said of the Razorbacks. “We were at 17 points a game to their 16, I wouldn’t have predicted that.”
“I knew it was going to be a great game,” junior outside hitter Sydney Dunning added. “Just the energy prior to stepping onto the court today was completely different than our game on Friday night.”
Wichita State (1-1) hit .261 against the Razorbacks after hitting just .098 against the Owls on Friday night. The Shockers held Arkansas to a .220 hitting percentage for the game.
Senior outside hitter Brooklyn Leggett (18) and Dunning (20) combined for 38 of the Shockers’ 64 kills. Junior setter Jordan Heatherly tallied a game-high 50 assists, good for a 43% assist rate.
“It’s amazing having two hitters in those positions (who) kind of do what they can with the ball,” Heatherly said. “If I’m out of system, or I’m off the net, I have nothing but confidence in them that they’ll go up there and they’ll try to rip it, or they’ll place it in a spot to get the other team out of system.”
Dunning’s 20 kills against Arkansas (1-1) is the first time she’s reached that mark since last October, when she recorded a career-high 23 kills while playing at Cal State Bakersfield.
“It was insane,” Dunning said. “I feel so supported by everybody out there, which is something new to me … I’ve never had somebody or the team behind me like that, which is amazing.”
Wichita State hits the road for its next tournament from Sept. 5-6 in Provo, Utah, as it takes on the BYU Nike Invitational. The first serve is scheduled for Friday at 11 a.m. against Incarnate Word.
Leggett and Dunning combined for five kills during an 8-1 scoring run in the first set to give the Shockers a five-point advantage, 17-12. By the end of the frame, Wichita State’s lead crept up to seven points and it claimed the set by that margin, 25-18.
The Shockers hit .262 and held Arkansas to a .132 hitting percentage. Dunning and Leggett combined for 13 of WSU’s 16 kills in the set.
Tied at seven in the second set, Arkansas went on an 11-1 run to give itself the largest lead by either team at that point, 18-8. The 11-1 onslaught proved too much to overcome as WSU hit just .097 during the set and lost the frame, 25-13.
The Shockers broke a 10-all deadlock in the third set with a 3-0 run to open a slight cushion, 13-10. The three-point lead remained consistent until a 4-0 flurry ballooned WSU’s lead up to six, 19-13.
Arkansas couldn’t keep up, evening after calling a timeout, as the Shockers closed out the set with five kills to claim it, 25-19.
Multiple 6-1 runs during the fourth set opened up a nine-point lead for the Razorbacks, 14-5. The Shockers immediately responded with a 5-1 run of their own to trim their deficit to five points, 15-10. WSU continued to fight but eventually dropped the set, 25-21.
The Shockers took a 6-3 lead in the tiebreak set after a 4-1 run in which Heatherly smashed a ball that Arkansas, or anyone in the gym for that matter, couldn’t handle. Maas broke open a four-point cushion with a service ace, which then became five, as Heatherly tapped her second kill of the set over the net, 9-4.
“I don’t think I would’ve had as many opportunities, especially in the fifth set, without them producing on the pins and in the middle,” Heatherly said of her attacks. “I thought their serve receive and their defense allowed me to go up.”
WSU didn’t look back after that and ran away with the set and match, 15-6.
“We’re talking in the huddle about just coming out to a fast start,” Maas said about the team’s run in the fifth set. “That’s exactly what we did. The crowd was great tonight, our bench was great, our team — we are very close off the court. Being able to see that on the court is also really exciting.”
