WEST PLAINS, Mo. — The Barton Community College volleyball team fell flat in its first match of the National Junior College Athletic Association tournament on Thursday morning.
No. 3-ranked Western Wyoming beat the Lady Cougars, 25-13, 25-21 and 25-19.
Barton will face No. 11-seeded Temple College this morning at 10. The winner will advance to the next round’s match at 4:30 p.m. today against the winner of the North Idaho-Western Texas match.
Lady Cougars head coach Patrick Hall said his team struggled early with nerves.
“Obviously from the scores, we came out a little tentative, a little nervous,” Hall said. “We had three starters who had played here before, so I had hoped that we’d be able to come out and play a little looser, but that didn’t happen. Hopefully, we can do that (today).”
Sophomores Juliana de Barros, Taylor Arnold and Gabriela Oliveira each have experience in the national tournament, playing two matches last season. The Lady Cougars fell to Western Wyoming in three games last year in the opening round, followed by a five-game loss to Florida State-Jacksonville.
The Lady Cougars seemed to settle down in the second game, even taking the lead with six points remaining.
“We kicked it ahead in the second set,” Hall said. “We took a 19-16 lead, but we let it slip away. We just never recovered from that.”
Barton struggled running the game plan that had gotten them into the national tournament — feed the ball to middle hitter Paula da Silva to free up the outside hitters.
“That’s just a recipe for disaster,” Hall said of getting away from the plan. “We needed to stick with what got us here. Our outside hitters struggled a little bit.”
Da Silva led the team with eight kills on 18 attempts. She also had three errors.
Setter de Barros led the team with a .400 hitting percentage. She had four kills on 10 attempts.
“When you have your setter leading your team in hitting percentage, you going to have trouble at the national tournament,” Hall said.
The Lady Cougars struggled with hitting errors throughout the match.
“We had a lot of errors,” Hall said. “In that first set, I think we had something like 15 errors. We struggled serving. After that first set, we had five service errors. We’re not going to be able to go to the national tournament and commit that many errors and hope to succeed.”
Hall said that defensively, the Lady Cougars did fine.
Giselle de Moura led with 13 digs and Oliveira added 10.
“We had some good digs and some long rallies,” Hall said. “We talked about being strong defensively. We need to be able to do that against Temple if we want to keep going. I think we’ll be fine defensively.”
Da Silva sits at No. 7 in the nation in kills per set with 3.95.
Barton will need da Silva against Temple, who has Rachel Edwards, who is tied for 10th in the nation in digs per set with 5.32. Da Moura is 24th with 4.69 digs per set.
“Paula is an older player, and she has played in big matches before,” Hall said. “We need to get her the ball more. Her attempts are usually in the upper 20s or even the lower 30s. She needs to have more than six attempts per set. When we get her the ball, it opens up the outside hitters.
“Also, her hitting percentage is usually in the 400s, you know, not the 300s.”
Temple setter Amanda Rister is fourth in the nation with 10.84 assists per set, putting her ahead of de Barros, who is 20th at 9.29 assists per set.