SHAWNEE – No. 24 Oklahoma Baptist won the Great American Conference Regular Season Title on Thursday night by defeating Southern Nazarene 3-0 at Noble Complex. OBU has now won outright titles the last three seasons.
The Bison played with great energy, had another outstanding defensive effort and saw all five of their seniors contribute to win.
With the result, OBU improved to 21-3 and 14-2 in the league and will be the No. 1 seed in next week's GAC Tournament in Hot Springs, Ark.
The green and gold set the tone in the first set, thwarting numerous SNU attacks. In fact, the Bison registered 29 digs in the opening stanza and held the visitors to a 0.20 attack mark. Early on, a kill by senior
Malia Leatherland had the home squad up 12-7. Over the next few sequences, the Bison got a few kills from another senior
Kaylee Buell and a block by senior
Destiny AbuBakir-Temple to push the tally to 17-9. That led the Bison to a 25-20 set-one win.
In the second, it was nearly all OBU. A Southern Nazarene setting error had the scoreboard at 7-2, Bison. At the point, the visitors were hitting a miserable -.091. A bit later, back-to-back service aces from
Rylen Moore moved the OBU advantage to 12-5. By the end, the score read 25-16.
Taneyah Brown had a huge second stanza with seven kills, as well.
Oklahoma Baptist then sealed another GAC Championship in the third.
SNU led 7-5 in the beginning sequences after a Bison error. However, coach
Anna Howle's team responded, scoring five of the next six points to take the lead for good. In that mini-spurt, Buell had a block and a kill while
Avery Hellmuth and
Malia Leatherland notched points. At the end of the third, OBU scored four straight to win 25-15. Its last point came on a AbuBakir-Temple block.
Among numerous accolades with this senior class, Buell, Leatherland, AbuBakir-Temple,
Taryn Weber and
Diana Carranza have helped the program post a remarkable 67-9 record (.882) since the 2019 season.
