AUSTIN, Texas – Sophomore Megan Wilson notched double-digit kills as the Oklahoma volleyball team were swept by No. 1 Texas, 3-0, in the first match of league play Saturday night inside Gregory Gymnasium.
"Overall, we would like to come out with a win and when you don't, you have to look at it objectively of what did we do well and what were the gaps that didn't allow us to find success like we have in the past ten matches that we've won," head coach Lindsey Gray-Walton said.
The Longhorns took the match in straight-sets, 25-20, 25-21, 25-18. Texas hit .312 in the match while holding the Sooners to .279.
Wilson finished with 11 kills and hit .333 with five digs, an ace and a block, while also accounting for 12.5 of OU's points. Freshman duo Taylor Preston and Alexis Shelton followed with eight and nine kills apiece, while Preston also added three digs.
Defensively, sophomore Callie Kemohah put up 14 digs, while also adding an ace and assist. Freshman Morgan Perkins and graduate student Adria Oliver each added two blocks each.
Sophomore Payton Chamberlain had 29 assists, five digs, along with a kill and block assist.
"I think the thing that it fell on was the serve and pass," Gray-Walton noted. "We missed early, and it forced us to have to try and just make serves. "When you're just trying to make serves, the other team's going to be in system."
In a back-and-forth battle with the Longhorns, the Sooners were trailing 15-12 heading the media time out. Before the timeout, OU knotted the match up eight-times with the top-ranked Longhorns. Out of the break, Texas went on a 2-0 run before forcing a Sooner timeout. The Longhorns would go on to win the set 25-20.
The Sooners jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the second set after an ace from freshman Chloe Kaminski and a pair of errors from the Longhorns. OU jumped out to an 8-4 lead, but Texas was able to close the gap 15-12 before the media timeout. Afterwards, the Longhorns went on a 4-0 run, forcing an OU timeout. After the Sooners' timeout, Texas senior Logan Eggleston added three kills to make the score 22-18 before OU used its final timeout of the set. The Longhorns took the set 25-21 to take a 2-0 lead in the match.
OU had another quick start in the third and final set, leading 6-1 after several errors from the Longhorns and a kill from Preston, forcing a Texas timeout. The Longhorns knotted the score 9-9 before going on a four-point run to take the lead 20-14 before OU's first time out. Coming out of OU's second time out, the squad posted back-to-back kills from Shelton and Perkins. The Longhorns closed out the set, 25-18, to win the conference match.
"We competed hard and had a relentless pursuit to maintain our tempo and our defensive effort," Gray-Walton said. "I think the things that we have to go back to our gym and work on is simply serve and pass, and becoming relentless in an environment that can get on you quickly. That's a hard first environment for a lot of our freshmen to be competing in, but I thought we settled in and started to compete, but we still have a lot to get better at."
The Sooners return to McCasland Field House for a pair of conference matchups, including their home conference opener against Kansas at 6 p.m. CT Wednesday, followed by West Virginia at 1 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 1.
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