No. 7 middle hitter Torri Campbell hits the ball over the net scoring another point for the Lady Bears in the Ferrell Center on Tuesday.
Sports Writer
The Baylor volleyball team swept Texas State 3-0 Tuesday night at the Ferrell Center.
Baylor started out the first set by quickly jumping out to an 8-4 advantage, forcing Texas State to call an early timeout.
Following the timeout, the Bobcats came out refocused and won the next two points, battling to even the set at 10 apiece.
Senior Alyssa Dibbern spiked the ball for a Baylor point.
Preseason All-Big 12 Torri Campbell earned a kill with a perfectly placed hit.
While the kills were there for the Bears, the team struggled with its serves.
Eventually, the Bobcats would tie the first set at 13-13 and go on to gain a 15-13 lead.
After a brief Baylor comeback, the two teams were knotted at 17-17.
Both Baylor and Texas State appeared to be evenly matched as they battled to win the first set.
Baylor took a 21-20 lead forcing Texas State to call its second timeout.
Campbell earned Baylor the first point after the timeout with kill.
After a tough and action-packed first set, Baylor won the set 25-22.
The first set was closely contested and had seven tie scores and four lead changes.
Going into the second set Baylor had all of the momentum and started hot to take a 9-5 lead.
After this point, the Bears faltered and the Bobcats tied the score at 9-9 before catching fire.
“We just thought of it one point at a time,” Campbell said. “Our coach called that timeout and so after that he wanted us to focus on one play at a time. After that timeout, we just really turned the mental toughness on and played.”
Following the timeout, Baylor still could not find its rhythm and the downward spiral continued.
With the Bears down 11-18, senior setter and team leader Kate Harris had the serve and helped propel Baylor to a comeback to tie the score at 22 and then win the set 26-24.
“We have this thing that we say: ‘focus on the next point,”’ freshman Laura Jones said. “Once we started focusing on winning that next point, we were completely fine. We were very aggressive, and that’s how we came back.”
The monumental comeback in the second set gave Baylor all of the momentum and the Bears never looked back from there.
Baylor carried over the energy from its second set comeback and jumped out to a 10-5 lead and never looked back from there.
A dominant third set ended with Baylor cruising to a convincing 25-14 win in the third and final set, ending on a sophomore Adri Nora thunderous kill.
“We challenged them to play harder and to stop thinking about the game and think about the points,” head coach Jim Barnes said. “Our minds weren’t into every point so we were letting runs of points go against us and so we just talked about playing hard fort that one point and getting back to that mentality and see what happens. We were lucky to come back.”
