No. 11 Texas Too Much For OU Volleyball

NORMAN, Okla. The Oklahoma volleyball team battled until the very end, but No. 11 Texas finished strong and swept the Sooners (30-28, 30-26, 31-29) Wednesday night in the squad's final home match of the season. Oklahoma fell to 7-21 overall and 2-17 in league play while UT pushed its record to 22-4 and 16-3 in league action.

“I thought our girls fought with everything they had tonight,” head coach Santiago Restrepo said. “However, when you're playing a tough team like Texas, you must finish every game and we didn't do that very well tonight. Texas played extremely well in the final game and came up with a lot of key blocks so you have to give them a lot of credit.

Boxscore: UT 3, OU 0 | 2005 Season Stats

In game one, Texas took the first five points, but Oklahoma rallied back and tied it up at 20-20 and even held the advantage at 27-26, but UT went on a 4-1 run to close out game one.

In the second game, it was Oklahoma's turn to jump out in front, taking the first four points and jumping out to a 6-5 lead. However, UT never let the Sooners lead again as the Horns took the second set, 30-26.

Game three looked like it was all Sooners as they owned their largest lead at 18-11 and held the lead until 29-25. Then, Texas tallied three straight blocks en route to its 6-0 run to claim the final game and the match.

Oklahoma had one its better performances of the season against the 11th-ranked Horns. OU tallied a .211 clip behind the play of junior Joanna Schmitt and sophomore Sarah Weiland. Schmitt led the team with a .325 clip as well as a match-high 19 kills.

Weiland followed her career performance against Baylor last week with an 11-kill night against the Horns.

Sophomore setter Julie Chester added a match-high 45 assists in the one-setter offense while the team combined for 47 total.

Defensively, Texas owned the advantage in every category. The Longhorns, who rank in the top three in the Big 12 in every category except digs, recorded 33 digs to OU's 27. UT also beat the Sooners at the net with 13 team blocks to OU's eight, including nine block assists in the final game.

For the Sooners, junior Anna Monsen collected a match-high nine digs while junior Eliane Santos led the team at the net with five block assists.

In their final matches at the Field House, senior Gabriela Tonon tallied nine kills and five digs while fellow senior Jennifer Adams pounded one kill for the Sooners.

Oklahoma will play its final match of the season this Saturday against the No. 25 Kansas State Wildcats at 2 p.m. in Manhattan, Kan.