NORMAN, Oklahoma – The longer the rally, the better the Northwestern State volleyball team seemed to play Friday morning.
 
Extending rallies, though wasn't enough for the Lady Demons in their match against tournament host Oklahoma as the Sooners posted a 3-0 (25-11, 25-17, 25-15) sweep in the opening match of the OU Nike Invitational.
 
"I think our style of play can work well against team like OU, but you have to be consistent within that style for it to work," fourth-year head coach Sean Kiracofe said. "We put together some more strings of plays that were better than last week. It just happened to be against better competition today."
 
The Sooners (6-4) used their size advantage to hit .333 for the match, committing just eight errors. Three of those errors came via blocks by the Lady Demons (4-5).
 
Conversely, Oklahoma notched seven blocks and held Northwestern State to an .063 hitting percentage.
 
Northwestern State broke confidently from the start, taking a 2-0 lead on a Reagan Rogers kill and an Oklahoma error. NSU's lead id not last long as the Sooners put together a 7-1 run to take control of the set.
 
Oklahoma capped its first-set win with an 8-1 surge, stopped only by Skylar Besch's kill to make it 23-11.
 
Northwestern State put together its best offensive set of the morning in the middle set with Cayman Sutton taking over at setter.
 
Sutton handed out a career-high 14 assists in just two sets of action an added three kills and six digs. In the second set, Sutton handed out seven assists, knocked down a kill and added a block assist.
 
NSU hit .132 in the second set, committing just four attack errors in 38 attempts.
 
"I was happy with what Cayman did in sets 2 and 3," Kiracofe said. "There's never a question of if she can run a good offense. The question is if she can handle her responsibilities at the net when she's matched up with a bigger outside hitter, and she did a very good job of that today.
 
"When you look at it from a plus-minus standpoint when she was involved with plays at the net outside of setting, Cayman did what she needed to so that was very encouraging."
 
Rogers led Northwestern State offensively with nine kills while Channing Burleson added a match-high 16 digs, averaging more than five digs per set for the fourth straight match.
 
Nothwestern State returns to action Saturday at 11 a.m. when it wraps up its stay in the OU Nike Invitational with a match against Texas A&M.