Henderson State booked its spot in the Great American Conference Volleyball Championships tournament final a day after the program's first postseason win in more than a decade.
The third seeded Reddies (28-5) avenged a home-court loss to second seed Southwestern Oklahoma State (21-7) with a 25-23, 26-28, 25-20, 25-22 win on Friday at Bank OZK Arena. They will meet No. 1 seed Harding (24-7) at 2 p.m. today in the tournament final.
Harding advanced to the final with a four-set victory against Ouachita Baptist (23-9), the fourth seed, in the second semifinal Friday. Both the Lady Bisons and the Tigers survived five-set challenges in the opening round on Thursday.
Henderson and Southwestern were tied for the second-best record in the conference at 13-3. The Bulldogs were the No. 2 seed with a three-set victory at the Duke Wells Center in Arkadelphia on Oct. 12 in the only matchup between the two teams in the regular season.
"First off, Southwestern is a great team," said Henderson head coach Philip McDaniel. "They have great players and, obviously this was their seniors' last game. So, hats off to them because they played very, very well.
"It was a big opponent for us. We were happy to get a little redemption against them. They came to our place and beat us in three."
Neither team led by more than three points throughout the entire first set. Courtney Bolf closed out the set with a powerful kill.
Southwestern prevailed in a tightly contested second set. The Bulldogs were in control early in the set. McDaniel called a timeout with the Reddies trailing, 18-13.
"The second set was phenomenal," McDaniel said. "It was probably one of the best sets I have been a part of in a long, long time."
Henderson won the first three points out of the timeout to force Southwestern into a timeout. The set was tied six more times. Southwestern staved off four set points before Danusia Sipa Borgeau recorded a kill and Kaitlyn Dillon served up an ace.
The Reddies surrendered the opening point of the third set, but they led the rest of the way. They persevered through a pair of challenges that went against them.
Henderson was originally awarded a point that would have led to a 16-11 lead, but the point was overturned, cutting the lead to 15-12. Southwestern had a chance to pull within one point, but Zuzana Ondruskova tipped it over the Bulldog blockers to give the Reddies a 22-19 lead.
The Reddies then won one of the longest points of the match to make it 23-20, but Southwestern coach Josh Collins challenged a potential net violation. The referees reviewed the entire rally, leading to a break of almost 10 minutes before the point was awarded to Henderson. A kill by Bolf and a Southwestern gave the Reddies the 2-1 lead.
"Challenges can be tricky because they are extra timeouts," McDaniel said. "That is extra time that either your mind can do good things or bad things.
"Our girls stayed very composed and we have been able to do that throughout the last half of the season. They have been very composed through the good and the bad times."
The two teams traded runs until Henderson scored seven out of nine points after trailing, 18-17. The Bulldogs prolonged the match with consecutive points before Adrianna Hartmann delivered the match-winning kill.
"We slowed down their middles a little bit," McDaniel said. "The stats are not going to say it, but we were able to get some touches on their middles, which we were not able to do at our place. We were able to keep them out of their system just a little more. That is a good team and they play great defense."
Henderson entered the match 0-9 against Southwestern in GAC play. The 28 wins this season is the most for the program since the Reddies won 28 matches in 2001 en route to an appearance in the NCAA Regional semifinals.
"For us, we talked about defense, we talked about winning the serve-receive battle and making sure that we stayed in the system," McDaniel said. "We did a great job of that. I was really proud of our girls tonight."
Southwestern compiled 57 kills and 109 digs. Henderson recorded 70 kills and 120 digs in only four sets.
"Which is pretty phenomenal," McDaniel said. "For us to be that high, we were playing good defense and getting back up in transition. That was a really big difference tonight."
Bolf and Ondruskova each registered 20-kill, 20-dig double-doubles for the Reddies. Bolf had match highs in kills, digs and points with 23, 33 and 26.5, respectively. Ondruskova tallied 21 kills, 20 digs and 22.5 points.
Elizabeth McVicker, the GAC Newcomer of the Year, paced the Bulldog with 17 kills with a .455 hitting percentage. Allie Hoang dished out a match-high 50 assists while Dillon, the league's Defensive Player of the Year, notched 31 digs.
Henderson will next meet Harding, which defeated Ouachita, 25-15, 25-14, 18-25, 25-22, in the second semifinal Friday night. The Reddies needed almost two and a half hours to advance to the final, while the second match lasted about an hour and 45 minutes.
Both Harding and Ouachita had four players with double-digit kills. Katie Camp, Tabatha Huckabee, Emily Low and Adrianna Low recorded 14, 12, 12 and 10 kills, respectively.
Julianna Mack led the Tigers with 17 digs and Nikki Clay made 11. Senior Stormi Leonard, who was named the GAC Setter of the Year for the second time this week, made 49 assists and 13 digs.
Sports on 11/10/2018