By Cody Stark
Last year the Sam Houston State volleyball team upset host Stephen F. Austin in the opening round of the Southland Conference tournament.
It was a huge win for the Bearkats and was just a preview of what was in store for this season. Thanks to some talented young players and senior leadership, Sam Houston is back in the postseason.
The shoe is on the other foot this time. The Kats are one of the favorites after wrapping up the second seed in the SLC tournament by going 12-4 in league play. Sam Houston will face seventh-seeded Nicholls in the opening round when the tournament begins Friday in San Antonio.
“One of the goals that every college team that has a tournament at the end of the year has to be to make it to the tournament as one of the top one or two seeds. That was our goal and we are,” SHSU head coach Brenda Gray said Tuesday afternoon. “We are still trying to get better. We are still learning and we want to win the thing.
“I think the girls have to understand that this is the last week of regular play and we want to (advance to the NCAA tournament). We love this team and we don’t want this to be over.”
The Kats swept the Colonels in straight sets in the only regular-season meeting between the two schools, but Sam Houston (20-13 overall) isn’t overlooking Nicholls (6-10 in SLC, 12-18 overall).
In the 2008 SLC tournament, SFA was the fourth seed when the Bearkats came back from a two games to one deficit to win in five and advance to the semifinals. Also, the Ladyjacks and Sam Houston only met once in the regular season, with SFA winning in four.
That’s the reason Gray and her squad aren’t taking the Colonels lightly. The Bearkats know what can happen if they do.
“Nicholls is a good team. We caught them on a bad night,” Gray added. “We had a bad night at Texas State. Everybody has had a bad night. Texas State had a bad night at Lamar. It has ran through the gamut. What is scary is we didn’t see Nicholls at their best. They are coming into the tournament with a loss, but there is a reason they are in the tournament. They earned the right to be there.”
The Bearkats did see Central Arkansas at its best last week. The Sugar Bears ran the table in the SLC, going 16-0 to win the league’s regular-season title, but they are not eligible for the postseason tournament.
That straight-set loss at Central Arkansas helped Gray figure out exactly what the Bearkats needed to work on before heading to San Antonio.
“I worked on some things today in practice after I watched Central Arkansas,” Gray said. “Their gym is very small, so when they serve, they really get your team out of position a lot. Their serves are very aggressive. I like to watch different teams and I’m not afraid to learn.
“When they came at us, they were very close to the end line, just really throwing the balls at us hard when they were serving. Today, I went back and told Anna (Ferguson) your serve is so far back that you have a larger room for error,” the coach added. “I told her about Central’s serving and she told me she felt like a totally different person because she is so much more confident serving. These are the things you want to hear your players saying.”
The Bearkats will face Nicholls at 4 p.m. on Friday at the Convocation Center on the campus of Texas-San Antonio. The winner will advance to the semifinals Saturday at 4 p.m. to play either third-seeded SFA or sixth-seeded UTSA, which play at 6:30 p.m. Friday.
Top-seeded Texas State opens the tournament with a match against eighth-seeded Southeastern Louisiana at 11 a.m. Friday, while fourth-seeded Lamar battles fifth-seeded Texas-Arlington at 1:30 p.m. The winner of those two matches will meet in the other semifinal game Saturday at 1 p.m.
The championship match, which will determine the conference’s automatic qualifier to the NCAA tournament, is scheduled for Sunday at 2 p.m.
