Sooners Win Five-Set Thriller over Kansas

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Sooners Win Five-Set Thriller over Kansas

October 16, 2020 | Volleyball

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NORMAN – The Oklahoma volleyball team picked up its first win of the 2020 season in thrilling fashion, pulling off the reverse sweep of Kansas in a 3-2 victory. The Sooners mounted a comeback for a 13-25, 23-25, 25-22, 25-16, 15-13 win inside McCasland Field House.

"That's a heartbreaker or a momentum builder," head coach Lindsey Gray-Walton said. "We needed that. We so needed that. Our kids are resilient. Gritted through. A young team - you've just got to keep coaching them. I'm really proud of their effort from every point tonight. It wasn't pretty at times ... we're young, we're emotional - like we say, they're high school seniors plus three months. So we tell them to come out and just play the game. That was fun to see tonight."

The Sooners are now 1-4 on the season after opening against the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the country for the first four matches. Kansas dropped to 1-6 on the year with the loss.

OU outhit Kansas .275 to .240 with a 57-51 advantage in kills. The Sooners held a 68-57 advantage in digs and 57-51 in assists. Kansas had the upper hand with 12 blocks to the Sooners 6. The teams combined for 20 services as the Sooners had a season-best seven to the Jayhawks 13.

"You want a loaded stat sheet," Gray-Walton said. "You don't want one person getting all the swings. Sometimes it happens that way that you need someone to set her every ball and that's kind of how Maras turned out in her three rotations. We started in rotation six. We wanted to make sure we had good point scoring runs with our servers and she had the hot hand. For us, what we need to do is - how many people can we get that many people that many swings and have that production of night two. They'll go back and watch the film, same as us, and we don't need to do anything magical. We do need to be crisper and ready to go but the best thing about those numbers is that people were getting available in transition and that's what we were harping on all week and that's great to see."

Sarah Maras amassed 15 kills on a .406 clip, with just two errors on the night. Guewe Diouf added 15 kills of her own and 15 digs for her second double-double of the season. Diouf has now reached double-digit kills in all five matches this season.

Sanaa Dotson and Sarah Sanders were both part of OU's balanced offensive attack adding 13 and 12 kills, respectively.

Keyton Kinley anchored the OU defense with 20 digs for a season high. Sam Anthony added 13 digs and setter Grace Talpash notched eight of her own. Talpash added a career-high 48 assists, while Kinley notched five on the night.

Kansas claimed the first two sets, 25-13 and 25-23 before OU pulled off the reverse sweep and won the final three sets to claim the match.

The Sooners took set three 25-22, before dominating set four, 25-16. The match came down to the wire with OU pulling out the 15-13 win.

OU went on a 5-0 run to start the game with Kinley serving. Kansas would pull even and take the lead at 13-10. With Kinley back at the service line, the Sooners won five straight points, with a kill from Talpash to clinch the first win of the season.

The teams will be back in action tomorrow at 4 p.m. CT inside McCasland Field House. The match can be viewed online at soonersports.com/watch.

For updates, follow @OU_Volleyball on Twitter or like Oklahoma Volleyball on Facebook.