...Champions
Patrick Swafford
Issue date: 12/1/05 Section: Sports
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Before the season even began, expectations were high for JSU volleyball.
"We're gonna win conference, that's our ultimate goal," OVC Player of the Year Abbey Breit said at the beginning of the season. "We know what we have to do, we just have to make sure we get there."
To get there, JSU would have to defeat three solid teams, including both OVC regular season co-champions, Tennessee State and Eastern Kentucky, to claim the trophy. When the final point of the tournament was scored, both Eastern Kentucky and JSU were left with tears in their eyes, but it was the tears of joy from the women of JSU volleyball that told the story, as they claimed the school's first conference championship in volleyball.
"We all worked hard for this," said Suzi Terrell. "In the three years I've been here, we always talked about it and we never did it. Finally we put it all together, and it just feels awesome to know that we accomplished something that we set to do."
The third-seeded Gamecocks rolled to a 3-0 victory over Austin Peay in the first round of the conference championship tournament thanks to defense. JSU held the Lady Govs to a .180 attack percentage; led by a 23-dig performance by senior Kisha West in what JSU coach Rick Nold called a "defensive battle."
"We had somewhere in the range of 74 digs," Nold said. "That's the style of team that Austin Peay is. It was just back and forth; digging a lot of balls, hitting percentages weren't real high. I thought they got us playing more their style of game. Fortunately, we played it well enough to beat them."
JSU got the last word in this season's three-match rivalry with Tennessee State in the semi-finals. The Gamecocks out-lasted the Tigers to claim the rubber match of the season series, 33-31, 30-26, and 34-32. Ironically, each of the three matches between both schools have ended in a 3-0 victory.
"It might have been 3-0, but it was a very close match," Nold said. "It very easily could have flipped the other way. It makes you feel real good about our team in the fact that at the critical times, we were able to come up with the plays we had to make and get a little bit of a lead."
The Gamecocks capped the historic weekend with a five-game war with Eastern Kentucky, televised on ESPNU. JSU won the first game, 30-20. They then lost two of the next three making a fifth and final game necessary.
With the Gamecocks down 11-8 and Eastern Kentucky building momentum, the dominant combination of Terrell and Breit helped JSU dethrone the defending OVC champions, 15-12.
"It's amazing," Breit said. "We had our ups and downs through the season, but what makes it so much more fulfilling is the hard work that we put in and it's the team that makes it so special. The twelve of us, we've been together for two years. We know each other better than everyone. We know each other's strengths and weaknesses and we know how to get the best out of each other."
The numbers are astounding:
Suzi Terrell's career high 35 kills were the best single-game output in the OVC this year. Her performance in the three games earned her tournament MVP honors.
The team, as a whole, recorded 99 kills.
Emily Withers recorded a career high 88 assists, another conference high this year.
Five Gamecocks recorded double-digits in digs, totaling 132.
"Very few times are you gonna have a game where so many different areas come together. You can look at that as a great offensive game, but defensively, we had 130-something digs. That is unbelievable defense. It's just very rare that you're going to click in so many different areas, and when you're doing that, one just feeds off the other."
With the win, the Gamecocks earned an automatic berth into the NCAA tournament, the first in school history. The 2005 OVC Champions will travel to Knoxville, TN for their first round match against Tennessee on Friday.