Meagan Downing | Lariat Photographer
Sports Writer
The Baylor Bears volleyball team hasn’t played a home match in 21 days and it hasn’t beaten Texas in 20 straight games.
Only one of those streaks were broken on Tuesday night as Baylor fell to the No. 9 Texas Longhorns in straight sets 3-0 (19-25, 18-25, 22-25).
The Bears had a difficult time defending Texas’ firepower.
Baylor only has four losses on the year and they are 1-3 versus ranked teams so far this season.
The Bears are now 0-2 in Big 12 conference play with losses at Iowa State and against the Longhorns in Waco.
Senior captain and setter Kate Harris leads the team with eight double-doubles and she led the team with 23 serve assists on Tuesday night.
Junior Zoe Adom gave the team a boost in energy as she was in the starting lineup and led the team with eight kills.
Senior Torri Campbell followed with seven kills of her own.
Sophomore Hope Ogden made her first career start at libero and led the team with 12 digs.
Throughout all three sets, a certain trend started to become a common theme.
Baylor started all three sets with superb energy and by jumping out to a quick lead.
However, the Bears couldn’t sustain the momentum against an extremely talented and athletic Longhorns team.
“I think what was happening is we would stick with them and they would get a big kill and for a second we would let that get to us,” Ogden said.
“We just had to remember that they’re athletic and they’re going to get those kills and we just have to keep cruising through and stay with every ball.”
In the first set, Baylor jumped out to a quick 4-1 lead behind the effort of Alyssa Dibbern.
Baylor started to slip slightly and Texas evened the score at 8 apiece.
Then Texas asserted their skill and displayed their athleticism and topped Baylor 19-25 in the first set.
For the second set, the Bears hopped out to an inspiring 5-3 lead and the crowd at the Ferrell Center wanted to believe in their Bears.
It was’t to be, though, as Texas won the second set 18-25.
Once again, in the third set Baylor earned a 2-0 advantage off of Campbell’s serving.
Texas did not retreat and it gathered itself and extinguished Baylor’s hopes of earning a victory as it won the third and final set, 22-25.
“Offensively we just couldn’t quite ever get it going,” head coach Jim Barnes said.
“But I was really proud of our defense. We played very aggressive defensively. We out-dug this team and that says a lot because they got some great hitters. I think there are some things we can build on. Against these really good teams we are getting better. Every set I can see us getting better. Texas has had the number one recruiting class five years in a row so they just got tremendous talent and we are working in that direction.”
Baylor simply had no answer for the two outside hitters as they compiled 25 kills total.
“They just had two great hitters who were putting the ball down every single time they got it,” Adom said. “We just couldn’t stop it but we’ll be ready next time”
