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Aggies win fourth straight

A&M volleyball team beats Kansas in three

By LARRY BOWEN
Eagle Staff Writer

The Texas A&M volleyball team swept three games from Kansas on Wednesday night. The Aggies called the match choppy, but they didn't call it chopped liver.

A&M pushed its winning streak to four matches with a 30-25, 30-27, 30-21 victory before a crowd of 1,409 at G. Rollie White Coliseum.

Kansas (10-12, 3-9 Big 12) remains ninth in the Big 12 Conference and hasn't won a game against A&M in two matches this season.

The Aggies (17-6, 6-6) overcame slow starts in the first two games to even their league record for the first time this year.

"They're a little bit lower in the standings, so [the win] was probably expected by a lot of people," A&M coach Laurie Corbelli said. "But it's still a team that went to Missouri and beat Missouri and had a great performance against Nebraska [losing 30-16, 30-25, 30-26]. You just can't take any Big 12 match lightly."

A&M fans will hope the start of the match wasn't a preview of what will happen in Saturday's football game between A&M and KU, because the Aggies' passing was bad. The inability to get the ball to their setter handcuffed the attack and allowed KU to grab a 13-7 lead in the opening game.

The Aggies took their first lead at 18-17 and led the rest of the way.

In the second game, A&M recovered from a sluggish start when sophomore outside hitter Mary Batis heated up.

"I think we were impatient," Corbelli said. "I noticed early that everyone was just running forward, and that's kind of a sign of impatience and wanting to hurry and get this done. I really am glad they took to heart the suggestions to be patient and stay back."

Outside hitter Sarah Ammerman led the Aggies with 16 kills and Batis added 13. A&M also got productive nights from Kelly Stanton and Kelsey Bryant, who combined for 18 kills mainly on slide attacks when the Aggies tried to draw a blocker to the middle and then attack from the right side.

The Aggies weren't really threatened in the third game as Kansas surrendered nine points on errors, including the last three. A&M likely will need to play much better Saturday at Oklahoma, which rallied to beat the Aggies 3-2 to start league play.

"We were happy with the win, but there are a lot of things that we know we can do better," Ammerman said. "I don't think we were satisfied."