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Austin, Texas – Texas State gave the top-seeded team in the NCAA Championships a tough match on Friday evening in Austin, but the Bobcats could not pull off the upset of Texas, falling 3-0 (15-25, 23-25, 15-25) to the Longhorns in the first round of the national tournament at Gregory Gymnasium.
The Bobcats concluded their 2011 season with a 27-8 overall record, while Texas (23-4) will advance to the second round of the NCAA Championships to play Michigan State.
Volleyball: NCAA match vs. Texas Gallery
Senior Amber Calhoun led the Bobcats with nine kills and a .357 hitting percentage on the night. The performance raised her hitting percentage to .331 for her career, tying former Bobcat, Kacee Rogers, for first in career hitting percentage at Texas State.
Sophomore Ashlee Hilbun also had a strong game for Texas State, putting down nine kills on 19 attempts with a .368 hitting percentage.
Junior Caleigh McCorquodale handed out 25 assists and led the team with seven digs on defense.
The Longhorns capitalized of their height advantage and finished with an 11.0-3.0 lead in blocks for the match. The home team also held small advantages in kills (36-30), digs (32-25) and aces (5-1).
Haley Eckerman (16 kills) and Bailey Webster (11 kills) led the way for Texas offensively and Rachel Adams paced the Longhorns with five blocks.
Calhoun put down the match's first point with a kill on a Longhorn overpass, but the lead would be short-lived as the home team gradually built a 13-8 lead midway through the set. A kill from Melissa Toth brought Texas State back within three, 14-11, but another Longhorn run helped put away the first set in their favor, 25-15.
The second was highly competitive and featured seven lead changes and 16 ties. After an early Texas lead, the Bobcats came storming back with a 7-3 run for a 10-8 lead that forced a Texas timeout. Texas State maintained control of the set until a three-point spurt by the home team midway through the set gave a 16-15 lead to the Longhorns. The Bobcats would not go away though and came back to take a 21-20 lead late in the stanza on a Texas attack error. However, the back-and-forth set would see five of the next seven points go to the Longhorns as they edged Bobcats, 25-23.
The final set was tight early on and tied at 8-8 before the Longhorns went on a run to pull away. The Bobcats came back within one on a kill from Calhoun to make it 13-12, but the next five points went to Texas as part of a 12-3 run to close out the match.
Calhoun and fellow seniors Rachel Doyle and Lindy DeGeare all played their final match in their Texas State careers on Friday. The trio helped lead the Bobcats to both Southland Conference regular season and tournament championships for the third time in the program's history.
Texas State's 2011 season was capped with the team's eighth appearance in the NCAA Championships, marking the fifth time in the past eight seasons that the Bobcats have advanced to the national tournament. The team's 27 wins during the season were the most since 2004.
