Volleyball | 11.01.2019 at 7:30 PM
Box Score OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. -- Inching closer to solidifying home-court advantage in the Sooner Athletic tournament quarterfinals, the John Brown University volleyball team completed the season sweep of Mid-America Christian (Okla.) with a four-set (25-21, 19-25, 25-16, 31-29) win on Friday (Nov. 1) afternoon inside the Gaulke Activity Center.
The Golden Eagles (22-7, 13-4 Sooner Athletic) need one more victory in their final three matches of the season to guarantee a home date on Nov. 12. The semifinals and final are played at Abe Lemons Arena in Oklahoma City from Nov. 15-16.
Junior Taylor Glover and senior Carly McKinney each finished with 10 kills, and senior Jessica Schultz hit .280 (10-3-25) as the trio led the Golden Eagle attack. John Brown also received a career-high 32 scoops from McKinney in the back row, as she finished with her seventh double-double of the season. Freshman Morgan Fincham finished one assist shy of tying her career high as she dished out 25 helpers which led the JBU offense to a .169 (46-16-178) effort in the four-set affair.
Averaging a .171 attack in 2019, the hosts were limited to a .071 (54-39-212) output.
"Tonight's match as one of feast or famine offensively," head coach Ken Carver noted after the match. "We were efficient in the first and third sets and struggled in the other two sets to find rhythm. There were a lot of long rallies tonight with a lot of hustle plays made and outstanding back-row digging by both teams. In the fourth set, our team had to fight back to get into the set as MACU was playing with a lot of emotion and energy. Once tied and into extra points, our players showed a lot of poise and just did a good job of focusing on the next touch, contact and point. Wins at MACU are hard earned as I don't believe I've ever had anything less than a four or five set match at their place in our team's most recent history.
"Carly had a monster game in the back row for us and our block was pretty consistent for the majority of the match. We did a good job limiting MACU's primary hitters to performances below their season averages. Megan and Kinzee did a good job setting the block against MACU's outside hitters and Jessica was working hard to close the block to them. Proud of our team's gutsy performance in picking up another conference win in a tough environment and challenging match."
Freshman Elizabeth Parrish and sophomore Jenna Lowery each served up a pair of aces, and the Golden Eagles helped out their own cause by committing just three service errors, its fewest in their last 16 matches.
MACU's Hannah Focker, one of the most dangerous attackers in the league, smacked a match-best 16 terminations, but the Golden Eagles limited the transfer to a mere .049 (16-13-61) night as she accounted for one-third of the Evangel attack error totals. In fact, the John Brown block put down Focker attack attempts on the MACU side of the net nine times throughout the match.
The visitors never trailed in the first set, but clung to a narrow 20-19 lead late in the frame. Back-to-back kills from junior Jaden Williams and senior Megan Beck forced a MACU timeout. Glover and Beck added kills down the stretch to clinch the 1-0 lead.
Boasting its single-set best .200 (14-6-40) attack in the second, the Evangels knotted the score at one apiece. After a Schultz kill to tie the set at 18, Mid-America Christian closed out the second on a 7-1 run.
Blocks from Glover, Schultz and Beck powered the Golden Eagles on a 6-0 set-opening run in the third that the Evangels couldn't recover from. The difference hit a set-high eight points, 15-7, midway through the set after a MACU attack error.
The fourth set featured 12 ties and nine lead changes as John Brown battled into its deepest set of the season. Senior Megan Beck's .571 (4-0-7) attacking in the fourth and final game helped the visitors stave off set point four times, until McKinney's cross-court shot from the left pin finished the match in dramatic fashion.
MACU hit just .016 (26-24-122) over the final two sets.
Up Next
John Brown will finish off its last regular-season road trip with a date with Science & Arts (Okla.) tomorrow afternoon at 1 p.m. inside the Drover Fieldhouse.
