ARKADELPHIA, Ark.—Southern Nazarene put together a season-high .311 hitting percentage as they took care of Ouachita Baptist in four sets (25-17, 28-30, 25-15, 25-11) to earn their third Great American Conference win of the season.
Outside of the second set, Ouachita (7-17, 2-9 GAC) was no match for Southern Nazarene (8-12, 3-8 GAC), who ran away with the first, third, and fourth sets en route to the win.
The Storm were nearly unstoppable in the first set, racking up a .478 hitting percentage thanks to 12 kills and just 1 error. Only twice in the entire first set did Ouachita earn back-to-back points as the SNU offense kept the Tigers on their heels.
It was a wild second set that SNU had plenty of chances to win, just could not put the Tigers away. The Storm pushed Ouachita to set point on four occasions, but never earned that two point lead to take the set as the Tigers finally rallied for three straight points thanks to a couple of SNU errors, to take set two 30-18.
Southern Nazarene seemed to learn from Friday night, though, as they never regained focus following an emotional set two loss to Henderson State. This time the Storm used it as motivation and came out firing in the third and fourth sets. They would run away from Ouachita in each of the final two sets, taking the third set 25-15 before absolutely dominating the Tigers 25-11 in the fourth frame. SNU did not commit a single error in that final set as they outdid the impressive first set with 13 kills and 0 errors and a .619 hitting percentage.
Sunny Batschelett continued her hot streak, racking up 14 kills thanks to another impressive .375 hitting percentage. Bailey Grimes was the other Storm member in double-figure kills with 10. Both Batschelett and Grimes each came up big at the net as well, totalling 7 blocks each.
After struggling in a big way at the certain line yesterday, Southern Nazarene got back on track a bit. They still ran into 10 service errors, but countered that with 10 aces. Madeline Lynch was the leader in that department with 4 aces to go along with her team-leading 23 digs.
The Storm now find themselves in sole possession of ninth place in the Great American Conference, one spot out of that all important 8th spot as the final conference tournament team. SNU will have their chance at 8th next week as the Storm host current 8th place team Southeastern Oklahoma State on Thursday at 7 PM. Prior to that match, though, Southern Nazarene goes out-of-conference to host cross-town rival Oklahoma Christian on Tuesday. First serve is set for 7:00 p.m. in that match.
