NATCHITOCHES – Northwestern State had its chances to close out Sam Houston State in four sets Tuesday night.
 
Given a second chance, the Bearkats took advantage.
 
Sam Houston middle blocker Taylor Cunningham punctuated a 22-kill night with four kills in the final set, helping the Bearkats rally for a 3-2 Southland Conference victory against the Demons.
 
"She was amazing," first-year head coach Sean Kiracofe said.
 
Northwestern State (3-13, 1-2) took the first and third sets by identical 26-24 scores, sandwiching those around a 25-10 Sam Houston victory in the second set.
 
NSU built off the momentum of the third-set victory, taking an eight-point lead on two occasions in the fourth set (15-7 and 16-8) before the Bearkats (8-8, 2-0) used a pair of 4-0 runs to eventually pull even at 21.
 
From there, the set went back and forth before Cunningham gave Sam Houston the 28-26 win with a kill. For the match, Cunningham finished with 22 kills and a .457 hitting percentage.


Sam Houston started the decisive fifth set by scoring five of the first seven points. After a tandem block by Natalie Jaeger and Glynna Johnson pulled NSU to within 5-4, Sam Houston responded with a 4-0 run to rebuild a five-point advantage. 


NSU responded with a 3-0 mini run before Sam Houston collected six of the final nine points to complete its 15-10 fifth-set win 
 
Only Cunningham and Madison Wallace (14 kills) managed to hit better than .125 for the visiting Bearkats, who hit .148 as a team.
 
"I feel we did enough with our block and with the rest of our defense to shut down the rest of the team," Kiracofe said. "(Cunningham) had a fantastic night. If we can shut down the majority of their team and leave it up to one kid to have an amazing night, I think we did a pretty good job."
 
While Cunningham worked from the middle of Sam Houston's offense, the Bearkats defense focused on taking away NSU's middle blockers, leaving opportunities for Northwestern State's outside hitters.
 
Lauren Agan (15 kills) and Caiti O'Connell (11 kills, .417 hitting percentage) responded, as did the back line of the NSU defense.
 
"It was their game plan to take out our middles, and to a certain extent, they succeeded," Kiracofe said. "Our outsides and our rights really came up and produced. They did a good job for us."
 
Kiracofe made a slight change along the back line, inserting Kylie Spencer in the starting lineup and Spencer responded with nine digs as NSU tallied 60 digs. Three NSU players – Madison Walford (12), Channing Burleson (12) and Bailey Martin (11) – reached double-figure dig totals.
 
"Kylie did very good coming in," Kiracofe said. "She supplied us with a lot of defense and ball control that allowed us to run our offense. We didn't feel we needed as much offense from the back line against this block, and our hitting percentage against the pins showed that."
 
Northwestern State hits the road for two matches in Southland play. NSU starts its road trip with a 6:30 p.m. match Thursday at Abilene Christian before heading to San Antonio for an 11 a.m. matchup with Incarnate Word.