MONTICELLO, Ark. – Oklahoma Baptist's 3-0 result at Arkansas-Monticello on Friday was the team's eighth consecutive victory and kept the Bison (14-8, 8-1 GAC) within a game of first-place Harding (20-1, 9-0 GAC) in the Great American Conference standings.
OBU's victory sets up a key conference match on Oct. 13 when Harding visits the Noble Complex for a 6 p.m. contest.
On this afternoon in Arkansas, the Bison defense kept its solid play going, allowing the Cotton Blossoms to connect on a mere .109 percentage. Plus, no UAM player reached double-digit kill totals. Over the past eight games, OBU has allowed its opponents to hit just .131.
As for the green and gold,
Jill Leslie notched 11 kills while
D'Erricka Frierson added 10. Plus,
Avery Hellmuth packed the stat sheet with six kills, five aces and a couple of blocks. Defensively,
Maci Langford notched 21 digs.
Nursing an 8-6 lead in the first, OBU scored seven of the next eight, which included a trio of kills from Leslie to seize command. UAM took a timeout when the tally reached 14-7, but that didn't help as the Bison eventually found themselves up nine, 21-12, after a Hellmuth kill.
After a 25-19 first-set win, the Bison got a little more than they bargained for in the second. At one point, OBU led 15-7 after a UAM ball-handling error. What followed was a massive Blossoms stretch that tied things at 16. Two straight kills from Riley Krenek evened the scoreboard, and it was a tussle the rest of the way.
Later, a block assist by the hosts tied things again at 22 before the Bison closed out the stanza. Frierson and
Taneyah Brown each had kills while an attack error helped the visitors win 25-23.
In the final stanza, OBU raced out to a 10-4 lead after an
Audrey Poupard block and never looked back. That defensive point told the story of the third as OBU held Monticello to a -0.05 attack mark. Four Bison tallied multiple kills in the set as well: Hellmuth, Frierson, Poupard and Leslie.
