The Cougars huddled after a point. (Aaron Amawan)
After a tough win against Lourdes university the Saint Xavier University Cougars add to their win streak after beating the Saint Ambrose Bees on Tuesday October 1st.
After a poor start to the season, the Cougars are starting to turn things around. With this win over the Bees the Cougars are now 9-9, with a three game win streak.
The Cougars and the Bees last competed against each other at Saint Ambrose, where the Cougars managed to reverse sweep the Bees. The Bees have not been able to beat the Cougars since 2020, as predictably the Bees may have came in looking to make a statement.
The game started off with the Cougars dominating the Bees offensively. The Bees were simply unable to stop the Cougars from getting kills as the lead quickly jumped to 14-7 in the Cougars’ favor.
After the Cougars jumped out to this quick lead they started to make mistakes and the Bees clawed their way back into the game. They were able to go on a 9-3 run and tie the game up at 17. This run was mainly due to the Cougars making error after error.
After the impressive run by the Bees, the Cougars were able to rally together and go on a 8-2 run of their own, finishing off the first set 25-19. The score really does not tell the whole story. The Bees played horribly in the first set while the Cougars kept the game competitive because they kept making unforced errors.
The first set should not have been close as the Bees hit at a depressing .026% while the Cougars hit at a .140%. The Cougars made eleven total errors in the first set with three of them coming from behind the service line. The Bees made a total of eight errors with only two errors at the service line. The difference between the two teams was that the Cougars were still getting kills while making errors. The Bees were not.
The start of the second set was much closer than the first.. Neither team went on a long run and the differential was never greater than two points until the Cougars got to double digits.
Once both teams reached 10 points, the Cougars were able to go on a four point run thanks to a kill by Courtney Hunter and the Bees making three errors. After this, the Bees were never able to bring the game closer than three points and the Cougars won the second set 25-20.
The Bees hit much better this set with a .161 efficiency but unfortunately for the Bees the Cougars hit at a .296% throughout the second set. The Cougars were able to limit their attacking errors down to only three but they still errored four times behind the service line.
With the third set coming around a sense of urgency started to fall upon the Bees as they played much better in the beginning. Once the Cougars hit 10 points, the Cougars started to run away with the game. The Bees simply were not able to stop the Cougars offensively and ended up dropping the third set 25-22.
This set was by far the Bees’ best performance as they had their best hitting percentage of .189% and made their least amount of errors. Unfortunately for the Bees, the Cougars hit even better with an efficiency of .200%. The Cougars played a very clean set from behind the service line, missing zero serves and adding two aces.
There were many incredible individual performances from the Cougars this game. Setter Kaleigh Ritter and outside hitter Connie Lebel both had triple doubles. Libero Avanna Martinez led the team with 16 digs.
Ritter, Lebbel, and Martinez swept last week’s CCAC player of the week awards. Right side hitter Courtney Hunter also added 13 kills of her own while hitting at an impressive .333%. Hunter has made a flawless transition to the right side as she has recorded double digit kill matches six times in a row.
With this win, the Cougars are back to .500 and improve to 5-0 in conference. The only team better than the Cougars in conference at this point have been the Viterbo V-Hawks, who are currently ranked number 17 in the nation.