9/18/02
Missouri 3, Texas 1
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| Kathy Hahn |
AUSTIN, Texas -- The 24th-ranked University of Texas volleyball team loss its Big 12 season opener to Missouri, 3-1 (30-26, 23-30, 24-30, 21-30), Wednesday night in front of 1,441 fans at Gregory Gym.
Texas (8-2, 0-1) hit below .200 for the first time this season at .196. Despite the low percentage, three Horns hit for double-digit kills. Sophomore Bethany Howden (Austin, Texas/Westlake) led in kills with a season-high 20 while Mira Topic (Kastela Kambelovac, Croatia/Vladimir Nazor) notched 19 kills with 13 digs. Kathy Hahn (Leander, Texas/Leander) finished the match with 13 kills. Freshman Caron Blotch had a career-high night with 58 assists.
"We had too many attacking errors tonight," said head coach Jerritt Elliott. "We were out of our system of play. We are a young team and took a stumble tonight. We will take a look and see what we can learn from this match."
Texas kept Missouri (11-1, 1-0) to a .034 attacking mark in game one while the Horns hit .211. Howden tallied seven kills while the defense came up with 14 digs. In game two, the tables turned as the Tigers hit .214 while UT hit .098, the lowest game hitting percentage this season. Topic tallied seven kills. Texas returned some momentum in game three, but could not over come Mizzou‚s offense. In game four, Texas committed 11 errors for Missouri points while the Tigers had only four hitting errors and one serve receive error.
Texas looks to rebound from the loss as it travels to Lincoln, Neb., for a Saturday night match against the fifth-ranked Nebraska Cornhuskers. Match time is scheduled for 7 p.m.
