Sports editor Jaralynn Tammi Morellano says Tulsa fell hard in its two-game series against Wichita State
The University of Tulsa’s volleyball team hosted Wichita State in the Donald W. Reynolds Center on Friday, Nov. 1. This meeting was the first of two planned for that weekend, the two-parter starting in Tulsa and ending in Wichita. The Golden Hurricane took a slip on its home court and gave the Shockers some happy memories on its trip to Tulsa as it took home a victory. This match dropped Tulsa’s record to 15-8 overall with a 7-4 conference record in the AAC. Wichita made its way back home with an improved conference record of 8-3 (13-10) overall.
The first match could be described as an offensive disaster for the Golden Hurricane. The team could not find its footing one bit, hitting a new season low of .000 attacking percentage. Mistake after mistake piled up for Tulsa, its attack errors providing the Shockers with free six points in a row. This scoring run washed TU out of the competition for the first set, propelling Wichita to a 7-15 lead. Though it was able to cut off this streak, the possession was short-lived as Wichita stole it right back to put itself at a whopping 13-point lead (8-21). The set ended shortly after (13-25), and things were dim for the Golden Hurricane.
The second set, despite having the same set of girls on the court, saw a different version of the Golden Hurricane squad. We may never know what happened between switching sides of the courts between the first and second set, but it was all for the better when Tulsa was suddenly securing all the points it missed out on in the previous set. Its team attack percentage increased to .270, a good amount of that effort coming from Jolana Smidlova who garnered five kills of her own. The set could only be described as an entire switch, the Golden Hurricane preventing Wichita from ever leading the entire set. There were a couple of tight situations where Wichita was able to tie the games, but Tulsa persevered and fought on until it stole the set 25-22.
Tulsa went into the third set with the same attitude, but Wichita took the sudden challenge as motivation to continue to pound on the Golden Hurricane. This set was the most up and down of them all with 10 score ties and four lead changes. This set also saw the rise of another offensive all-star on the Tulsa roster, Tytiana Johnson, who smashed four uncontested kills into Wichita’s side of the court. Unfortunately, Wichita was able to hold out for a lot longer and continue hitting for a lot longer. It took the set 19-25 to put the game 1-2.
Even with the combined efforts of Tulsa’s reliable Beth Bayless and Tatum Tornatta, the Golden Hurricane struggled to overcome the attacking prowess of Wichita’s Morgan Stout. She alone put up eight kills in this single set to pave the way to victory for her team. When the score hit 16-19, the Golden Hurricane called a timeout to strategize. This extra time only delayed its fate, the timeout doing nothing good for it. The set ended in favor of Wichita when Stout ended the match 23-25 with her 20th kill of the night.
Tulsa, despite this downfall, continued on to face the Shockers once more on Sunday, Nov. 3 at Wichita State. After this, the Golden Hurricane will stay on the road and head to North Carolina to face East Carolina at 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 8. Its next home game will not be until the following week on Friday, Nov. 15.
