RUSSELLVILLE, Ark. – The Arkansas Tech women's volleyball team dropped their first Great American Conference match of the season on Tuesday night as they fell in four sets to visiting Harding inside Tucker Coliseum.
In the opening set, the Golden Suns fell behind early as Harding captured the first four points. That deficit did not last long, however, as the Golden Suns knotted the score at six-all moments later and briefly took an 8-7 lead. Harding then scored five of the next six points to take a three-point lead, 12-9.
Trailing by that same margin, but with the score 13-10 in favor of Harding, the Golden Suns surged back in front with a 6-1 run. The Lady Bisons then tied things up at 16-all. The two teams then traded the next four points to push the stalemate to 18-all.
The Golden Suns then broke the tie on a service error by Harding and rattled off three-straight points to go up 22-18. Harding a brief three-point run in them to close the gap to a single point, but alternating points the rest of the way out, gave Tech the first set, 25-23.
Set two was closely-contested throughout with neither team with the largest lead for either team being a mere two points until the very end where Harding closed on consecutive points to win the set, 25-22. In that second set, both teams registered a dozen kills.
The third set proved to be the most pivotal of the sets as it represented the swing in the match and carried over the most momentum from its final result.
The Golden Suns were the ones to establish control early as they raced out to a 7-2 lead. The Lady Bisons then came roaring back with eight-straight points to take a 10-7 lead. Harding later built up their lead to six points, 17-11, before the Golden Suns rallied for four-straight to close the deficit to two-points.
Harding then scored six of the next eight points and got to the potential penultimate point of the set while holding a seven-point lead, 23-16. At that point, the Golden Suns' offense caught absolute fire with six-straight kills to pull within a point, 23-22. They then benefited from a pair of Harding attack errors to suddenly be serving with set-point in their favor.
The Lady Bisons would fight off two set-points and closed the set with three-straight points to win 27-25. In that set, the two teams combined for 35 kills with Tech having 18 of those.
Unfortunately, the momentum lost from having their epic comeback cut short, was too much to overcome in the fourth set as Harding, when trailing by two, 4-2, seized control of the set with a 7-0 run. Harding then was able to keep the Golden Suns at bay the remainder of the set to win, 25-14, and the match, 3-1.
The Golden Suns will look for a bounce-back in two short days as they travel to Arkadelphia to take on Ouachita Baptist in a match on Thursday, October 3. First-serve is scheduled for 6 p.m.
