CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – For the third time this season Northwestern State played toe-to-toe and point-for-point with HCU. The third back-and-forth battle in the conference tournament ended in a 3-0 (25-21, 25-21, 25-15) loss for the Demons to finish their 2023 season.
 
"It was the story of our matchup with them all year," head coach Sean Kiracofe said. "We had close sets when we played them both times this year. We just have very even matchups across the board. 
 
"They are a team that sub out a lot for ball-control and defense so their defense is incredibly good and it's hard to put the ball away. There were plenty of time in the first and at the end of the second where we did not give ourselves the opportunity to be aggressive enough to score and they turned it around and turned them into points."
 
The stingy HCU back row collected 82 digs across the three sets on the day, keeping the NSU offense at bay while turning their opportunities into 53 kills including a pair of 20-plus kill sets to advance into the semifinals against Southeastern.
 
Like they did on the first ball of the match the previous day, the Demons scored on a clean pass, set, kill to Teresa Garza. They added to the early edge on the next serve as Reaghan Thompson immediately added another entry to her growing list of NSU accomplishments.
 
On her first opportunity of the match Thompson broke the NSU single-season blocking record of 160 formerly held by Glynna Johnson. She finished the match with four rejections to set the new top spot at 164, falling six blocks shy of also setting the Southland Conference record during the rally scoring era.
 
Back-to-back rejections later in the set, from Thompson and Symone Wesley on the first and La'Treva Kennedy and Breanna Burrell on the second, closed the small lead HCU had built with a quick 4-0 scoring run. Although the Demons did their best to chase down the Huskies from that point forward, another 4-0 burst and a 3-1 stretch kept NSU at arm's length before the Huskies' 20^th kill of the set ended the first.
 
Two lengthy rallies early on in the second set put both defensive units on display and epitomized the trend for the match and the season series between the two teams. The two 30-second plus rallies both ended in HCU points with the first coming on a kills and the second a block to tie the score at three after the Demons jumped ahead 3-0 to start the second.
 
NSU took the lead a few serves later thanks to a 4-0 burst where the T.G. initialed transfers each scored with kills and Ashlyn Svoboda picked up an ace to make it a 12-11 frame. Garza collected her 300^th kill of the season during the run to mark the eighth time in program history for a player to record 300 kills and 300 digs in a single season.
 
The Demons remained in control of the game until the late stages holding on to the two-point lead at 21-19 following kills from Kennedy, and two from Gerwig.
 
The set, and the match, turned over the next six serves and the Huskies stormed back with two kills, two blocks and an ace as part of the 6-0 scoring run to win the set and give them the 2-0 lead in the match. 
 
"We got stuck in one rotation and we lost a few too many points and weren't able to recover from that late in the set," Kiracofe said. "The only thing we didn't take advantage of is when their setter was in the front row to put ourselves in position to score down the line when she was up. It's a point her and a point there. It's one rotation that can be the deciding factor between two teams like this."
 
HCU used that momentum to blitz through the third set, jumping ahead 12-4 on six straight kills early in the frame. The Demons made a final push with a 5-0 run with kills from Thompson, Kennedy and Madisynne McQueen an a block from Wesley and Kennedy.
 
The Huskies responded with a four-point scoring run to regain control and finish off the set and the match.