November 25, 2000
The 25th-ranked Texas A&M volleyball team earned its first-ever conference series sweep of Texas, defeating the Longhorns 15-7, 15-7, 15-8 Saturday before 1,557 fans at G. Rollie White Coliseum.
With the win, the Aggies finish the regular season at 19-8 overall and tied for second in the Big 12 standings at 14-6 along with Kansas State and Missouri. Texas falls to 10-18 on the year and 8-12 in league play.
Prior to the match, Texas A&M honored its three seniors--Christy Clark, Claire Harvey and Heather Marshall-- who were seeing their final regular-season home action.
"This was a great way to finish up," A&M head coach Laurie Corbelli said. "I knew the team would be very fired up tonight, and I'm really pleased with the way we executed. It really was a lot of fun."
The Aggies scored the first five points of the match before Texas fought back to pull within one at 5-4. A&M then went on a six-point run and let UT get no closer than four points down the stretch. The Horns fought off four game points before Amy Hultgren was called for two hits off an A.D. Achilefu jump serve, giving the Aggies a 15-7 victory. Michelle Cole led the first-game surge with six of her nine kills.
Texas built an early 2-1 lead in the second game, but A&M scored the next four points to regain the lead and then went up 6-2 on a Christy Clark service ace. The Longhorns closed within three at 8-5 before A&M cruised to another 15-7 win. The Aggies scored three consecutive points with Heather Marshall on serve to close out the game with the final point coming on one of Erin Gibson's match-high 18 kills.
Clark started the third game with another service ace. After a Longhorn block cut the A&M lead to 3-2, the Aggies scored the next seven points to go up by eight at 10-2. An attack error by Jenny Tanneberger had A&M serving for the match at 14-8, and Julia Rex got one of her five kills on the night to close out the 15-8 Aggie win in game three.
The Aggies out-hit Texas .331 to .179 despite being out-blocked nine to eight. A&M also posted 66 kills to UT's 43 and 65 digs to the Longhorns' 46. Hultgren and Gipy Duarte shared high-kill honors for Texas as each notched 10 on the night. Marshall was A&M's only other attacker in double figures, hitting .429 to go along with her 10 kills. Harvey had a match-high 41 assists while posting a .500 hitting percentage and a career-high seven kills.
Texas A&M looks to make its eighth consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament when the 64-team field is announced on Sunday. The selection show will be shown live at 7 p.m. (CST) on the Sunshine Network (DirectTV 632 / Dish Network 422) and Home Team Sports (DirectTV 629 / Dish Network 424).
"This is the beginning of a new season that will be really exciting for us," Corbelli said. "I really have no idea where we'll end up. With 64 teams in the tournament anything can happen. This team will be ready to go."