Fort Hays State University had two set-point opportunities in the fourth set to possibly force a final set, but Missouri Western held off FHSU both times and eventually won the set 29-27 and the match 3-1 on Friday in St. Joseph, Mo. The Tigers held an early 1-0 lead in the match before the Griffons took the next three sets. The Tigers moved to 13-15 overall, 7-12 in the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletic Association with the loss.<\/p>\n
FHSU\u00a0jumped out to an early 8-4 advantage in the first set, but the Griffons inched their way back, tying it up at 11-11. The rest of the set was a back-and-forth battle as neither team could gain more than two points of separation all the way to a 23-23 tie. The Tigers pulled out the final two points of the set on a kill by Callie Christensen<\/a><\/dfn> and then an attack error by the Griffons, posting a 25-23 opening set win.<\/p>\n The Griffons bounced back to build an 8-4 lead in the second set, but the Tigers went on a six-point run to take a 10-8 lead. That was short lived as the Griffons scored three straight to take the lead back, and then the teams battled back and forth to a score of 16-16. A rash of three attack errors and a pair of kills by the Griffons pushed them to a five-point lead. FHSU had a late three-point run to cut the lead back to two at 23-21, but the Griffons closed the set with a pair of kills to tie the match.<\/p>\n The third set saw the Tigers take an early 7-4 advantage, but the Griffons eventually pulled even at 12-12. The teams engaged in another mid-set see-saw battle, eventually pushing the score to 20-20. The Griffons would take four of the next five points, three on kills by Erica Rottinghaus, and closed out the set by a score of 25-22.<\/p>\n The fourth set was tight throughout, as FHSU would find itself on the brink of forcing a fifth and deciding set. The teams traded points to a 7-7 tie, but the Tigers jumped into the lead with a four-point run to make it 11-7. The Tigers looked in good shape with a 17-12 lead, but they surrendered six straight points on four kills and two service aces to allow the Griffons to take an 18-17 lead. The teams battled back and forth once again to a tie at 23-23. The Griffons had match point at 24-23, but a kill by Rebekah Spainhour<\/a><\/dfn> forced the win-by-two situation. A block by Christensen and Sara Hewson<\/a><\/dfn> had the Tigers at set point leading 25-24, but the Griffons came up with a block to tie the set again. FHSU forged back ahead 26-25 on kill by Taylor Mares<\/a><\/dfn>, but the Griffons answered with a kill once more. A kill by Christensen killed the second match-point opportunity for MWSU to make it 27-27, but Jessie Thorup would put the match away for MWSU with consecutive kills, ending the set at 29-27.<\/p>\n Redshirt-freshman Kaitlin Bradley<\/a><\/dfn> led a balanced attack by the Tigers with 13 kills, followed by Hewson and Spainhour each with 12. Hewson added 11 digs for a double-double. Raegan Vanderplas<\/a><\/dfn> had 25 assists, while Kristin Conor<\/a><\/dfn> added 20. Keanu Bradley<\/a><\/dfn> led FHSU in digs with 16.<\/p>\n Rottinghaus led Missouri Western with 19 kills, followed by Thorup with 15. Rottinghaus also tied for a team-high 15 digs, recording a double-double. Jordan Chohon had 59 assists and 12 digs for a double-double.<\/p>\n The Tigers complete the weekend road trip by visiting Northwest Missouri State on Saturday at 2 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fort Hays State University had two set-point opportunities in the fourth set to possibly force a final set, but Missouri Western held off FHSU both… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[382],"tags":[3380,3508,3506,3515,3379,1882,111,385,3601,1880,619,384],"class_list":["post-15900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-volleyball","tag-callie-christensen","tag-fhsu-womens-volleyball","tag-kaitlin-bradley","tag-keanu-bradley","tag-kristin-conor","tag-mallory-flagor","tag-missouri-western","tag-northwest-missouri-state","tag-raegen-vanderplas","tag-rebekah-spainhour","tag-sara-hewson","tag-taylor-mares"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15900"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15952,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15900\/revisions\/15952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}