With their 3-1 win tonight over the Abilene Christian University Wildcats, the UTRGV Vaqueras now share the regular season championship title and gain the No.1 seed in the Western Athletic Conference Tournament.
The UTRGV Volleyball Team has a chance to gain the full title of regular-season champions with a win against Tarleton State University 2 p.m. Saturday at the UTRGV Fieldhouse, according to a Nov. 10 Athletics news release.
With tonight’s win, the Vaqueras are now 23-5 overall and 12-1 in the WAC and the Wildcats are 7-18 overall and 4-9 in the WAC.
This is the team’s second WAC championship after winning for the first time in 2018, according to the news release.
While UTRGV had a strong start, ACU surged ahead at the end of the first set and scored the set point at 25-23 bringing the match to 1-0.
“Amazing crowd and hats off to ACU,” Head coach Todd Lowery said. “They came out and played well. They were fighting to stay in the tournament. So they had a lot to play for. And I just thought our girls did a great job of fighting back [in] set one and not just kind of writing it off. And I think that allowed us to build some momentum into set two and three and four. And as things went on, I think you could just, they could feel it, the girls could feel it, and they kept playing better and better as the night went on.”
The Vaqueras dominated the second set keeping a wide point gap with the Wildcats, ending the set 25-16 bringing the match to 1-1.
“I felt like I had a little bit of pressure on me because they always have a double block on me and Luisa [Silva Dos Santos], so it’s kind of hard for us to score sometimes,” outside hitter Sarah Cruz said. “The communication got a little bit better with the setter with Luanna [Emiliano] and then everything worked out. It was just going great after that, and we’re not scared to score, we’re not scared to hit. I think that’s why it’s going so well.”
UTRGV kept the momentum going with another wide gap against the Wildcats ending the third set 25-17 bringing the match to 2-1 for the Vaqueras.
“I thought our serve continued to get better, you know, and then when it was tight early [in] set three, it was because we missed three out of the first five serves, you know, and we have to do a better job of putting pressure on people,” Lowery said. “I think once we started to consistently serve pressure on them, and we dug a couple balls, and it’s really a crazy game. You dig three balls in a row, and all of a sudden you’re ahead by six or seven [points] and that was really the difference. We made a couple of extra effort plays where people just scrambled and we sent the ball back over and then we got ourselves in a little bit better [of a] position.”
In a crowd-pumping final set, the Vaqueras ended the match 25-18 bringing the final score to 3-1 and earning UTRGV the regular season championship.
“Today, it’s very exciting because we won the regular season championship,” Cruz said. “It didn’t happen to me [in the] four years I’ve been here. So this is just [a] very special moment for me and all of the team. We started a little bit slower on the first set, but then we picked it up and we knew what we had to do and we did it. I think it went well after that. And then we finally won it. We’re getting the ring. So that’s exciting.”
The Vaqueras next game will be against Tarleton State University at 2 p.m Saturday at the UTRGV Fieldhouse. For more information, visit goutrgv.com.
