As the final stretch of the season approaches, so do the final chances for the Aggies to defend their home court and secure a good seeding for the conference tournament.
For the third time this season, the Aggies were riding a two match six set winning streak against the Liberty Flames and only the Flames stood in the way of that streak. The team had won three matches in a row at a couple other points in the season, but they never went nine straight sets unbeaten. It is a good thing Justin Bieber told us to never say never.
Coming into the night, the dynamic duo of outside hitters Mari Sharp and Starr Williams put in 32 combined kills over the last couple of matches with a surprise third amigo getting to the top of the leaderboard in outside hitter Ashley Herman pouring in 21 kills of her own. You don’t win six sets in a row without numbers like those.
The first set looked a bit sloppy for the Aggies with a couple self-inflicted errors such as a serve error and a few long balls, but the team was able to clean things up. The clean up was apparent later in the first set, which saw the Aggies take control with the help of Yasso Amin, Williams, and Sharp. The four having nine combined kills before libero Darian Markham extended the streak to seven with her serve ace to win the set 25-20.
Taking over sets late was something head coach Mike Jordan commented on after the game.
“I think we’re serving the ball better, which is helping our block and our defense,” he said. “But more than anything, I think we’re starting to just get a little more confidence that [what]we had earlier in the year.”
Whether it was confidence, pure skill, or a combination of the two, the second set saw the same for the Aggies. But it didn’t come easy. An early challenge by coach Jordan for a touch failed, but that time seemed to give both sides an extra boost of energy.
The match got much more entertaining as the two sides were matching each other point for point with each point having to be earned after long battles throughout. All this did was get the Aggies to their comfort zone., They built a cushion of a lead and never looked back, as Williams put the nail in the coffin with her ninth kill of the night to win the set 25-21 and get the streak to eight.
Keeping a streak alive is never easy. Getting into a two-point deficit early in set as the Flames showed some fight and proving that they would not be snuffed out easily. But the Liberty head coach was rattled, as his clapping that was alive earlier, vanished and was replaced with crossed arms and silence. The thing about avalanches is that you can’t hold them back for long as Liberty found out when the Aggies built another buffer of a lead.
Look no further than the Aggies building their biggest lead of the night to set up the match point leading 24-15. Amin made sure to kill the Flames completely with her twelfth kill of the night, getting the streak to nine and three consecutive matches.
Amin was no doubt the star of the night, getting 12 kills without any errors and having a career high .750 hitting percentage–
something that made her recent milestone in her career extra special.
“I just realized that I got into the thousands of my career kills,” she said. “[My] parents and my family and my best friend Miles have been more of a support system I struggled in the UTEP game where it hit me really hard and it stuck with me. And after all cries and all the pains and pillow screams and stuff, I felt like I have to pick myself back up and they reminded me who I am and how I should act. In addition to Rilen [Garcia] and Nellie [Reese] literally setting up dimes.”
She also had her thoughts on the streak that the team is on.
“I feel like everybody’s doing their job,” she said. “The energy is good because everybody decided that they’re going to pick themselves up.”
Saturday’s match saw more of the same, with the streak getting extended to twelve straight sets in another sweep over Liberty on the back of Sharp, Herman and Kacia Brown, getting eight kills each, with Brown and Sharp getting five and three blocks respectively.
The Aggies hit the road this weekend to take on the number one seed, the Western Kentucky University Hilltoppers. Aggie fans can keep track of the teams’ streak on ESPN+ on Friday, Nov, 1 and Saturday Nov. 2.
