Come out strong. Go into a funk. Snap out of it. Win.
Sometimes, Emporia State seems to be really good at completing that kind of sequence — and the Hornets can even do it when they’re playing the fourth-ranked team in the country, a team that’s won 18 matches in a row.
All that mattered to No. 9 ESU, in the end, was that the Hornets recovered to win a five-set grudge match over Central Missouri on Wednesday in front of a high-energy crowd at White Auditorium, that they ended the Jennies’ winning streak, and that the two teams are even for last month’s sweep by Central.
Oh, and that the Hornets and Jennies are now tied atop the MIAA standings with identical 12-2 records. That part’s kind of important, too.
“We knew coming in that for us to stay in the MIAA conference run, we had to beat them, since they had one loss to Pitt (State),” said freshman Katelyn Schmidtberger, who played the best match of her young career. “... And since we got killed last time when we were up there, we knew we couldn’t come out dead like we were there.”
The Hornets (25-3) came out anything but dead, winning the first two hard-fought sets and putting themselves in great position for a sweep by building a 21-15 lead in the third set. Central fought back then with five unanswered points and went on to win the third set 25-23, then roasted the seemingly out-of-it Hornets in the second half of the fourth set, scoring 13 of the last 16 points to win 25-17 and force a fifth set.
“Fourth set, for some reason, that really seems to be kind of a tough one for us,” Brianne Boner said. “After a third (set) loss, I feel like maybe we’re a little embarrassed we let ’em slide, or maybe less confident. And then it comes to that fourth match, and it’s just getting back up that hill, getting the confidence back up. So it’s kind of rough and bumpy, and we all kind of look at each other like, ‘What are you doing, why is that?’
“But I think that’s what makes a good team, is to come back in the fifth and put it back together.”
In that deciding set, the Hornets looked like themselves again. Three kills from Brittney Miller and two by Schmidtberger, including the match’s final point, led the way in the 15-11 win.
“We have seen this kind of game before — we learned our lesson,” ESU coach Bing Xu said. “... We’re lucky that we came back in the fifth game, and they picked up their character and they picked up their game, they picked up their level. ... I think that’s really good. They can learn from themselves.”
The Hornets spent much of their night setting up Schmidtberger, and she responded with a solid impression of Emporia State’s top hitter, Arica Shepard. Schmidtberger led ESU with a career-high 18 kills and a .238 hitting percentage, and she also contributed 18 digs. She had five kills on .417 hitting in the first set, a 25-22 ESU win in which the Hornets fell behind 16-12 before marching back and finally ending it on a Shepard kill.
Emporia State sprinted out to an 8-1 lead in the second set, with the emotional peak coming when Miller rose up right next to Ting Liu to viciously hammer down one of Liu’s lower-hovering sets, making it 7-1. But Central Missouri called timeout and soon stormed back, aided by three straight Hornet attack errors. Finally, after Central had tied it 9-9, it was Xu’s turn to take a TO. Central scored three unanswered points out of that timeout, but ESU stayed close and pulled even on a kill by Boner that made it 18-all. The Hornets pulled ahead 20-19 on an attack error, and kills by Liu and Shepard finished off the 25-21 win.
Shepard put one down in Set 3 to give the Hornets a 21-15 lead, but a couple of attack errors aided Central in pulling to within 21-20 when Taylor Krejci deflected an ace off Schmidtberger. A Shepard attack that fell out of bounds tied the set at 22, and Allie Huffman’s kill to an empty space gave Central a sudden lead and set point. An attack error by Huffman got ESU back to within one, but she ended the set with a kill along the sideline.
Shepard wasn’t at her sharpest, finishing with 15 kills, seven errors and a .174 hitting clip, though she did also contribute 18 digs and five blocks.
“I think (my) confidence was gone a little bit,” she said. “I started getting blocked, started hitting some out, and it just kind of went downhill from there. And being a senior, I shouldn’t allow myself to do that.”
Miller contributed 12 kills, and Boner had 11, along with six blocks. Her second assist block of the night made her the all-time Emporia State leader in that category. Liu finished with 54 assists, and Byfield had a team-high 23 digs. For the match, the Hornets hit .171.
Emporia State will travel to Nebraska-Omaha on Saturday for a 4 p.m. first serve.
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