HOUSTON – Northwestern State was one point away from completing a reverse sweep on the road against HCU on Saturday night, but an attack error opened the door for the Huskies to hold on for the 3-2 (25-16, 25-20, 17-25, 19-25, 19-17) win.
 
After a slow start to the match, the Demons settled into the match late in the second set and used an aggressive and effective service line to seize control of the match in the third set. NSU tallied eight aces in the third set alone, helping them pummel their way offensively to two straight .300 attacking sets.
 
"I'm proud of them for having a slow start and being able to dig down bringing us within a point of a reverse sweep," head coach Sean Kiracofe said. "HCU was playing well and was relentless on defense to start the match. When it is a team's senior night it is very difficult to change the momentum like we did tonight."
 
Reaghan Thompson established the aggressiveness from the line with back-to-back aces early in the third set to give the Demons the lead. Two straight from Ashlyn Svoboda near the midpoint put the Demons up 14-11. Playing on the front foot from that point forward, Gabby Seeds helped close the third set with a seven-point serving run where she collected three aces during the stretch.
 
NSU closed the third set on a 7-0 run to extend the match to a fourth set and took that same confidence through the rest of the night.
 
Seeds engineered a six-point serving run in the fourth set, featuring two more aces giving her a new career best with five. The Demons finished with 12 aces in the match, the most in a single match this season.
 
"We did a good job with our serves the first time we played HCU, but today at the beginning we were missing our zones and we were passive as well," Kiracofe said. "Then towards the end of the second we had a few get dialed in and once that started everyone started to put more pressure on their passers. 
 
"We started to execute better in a lot of different ways in the third outside of our serves, but if you can disrupt a team immediately on their first contact it makes everything easier on defense."
 
The control from the line led the Demons to their most effective offensive set of the night finishing with 18 kills and a .359 team attack percentage with just three unforced errors in the frame.
 
Teresa Garza pounded home three kills on a four-point Demon burst to push the lead to 16-12, part of a stretch of 12 kills over the final 15 points of the set. Thompson, Olivia Bush and Samaya Wesson accounted for four straight kills in another four-point burst late in the frame that all but sealed that there would be a decisive fifth set.
 
Bush had five of her career high 10 kills in the fourth set while Thompson and Garza combined for nine kills on 20 error-free swings in the frame.
 
Like they did from the beginning of the match, the Demons had to work their way back from the brink in the critical final frame after trailing 10-6 after the turn.
 
Thompson took the initiative with three kills in the Demons 4-1 scoring run to pull them back within a point at 11-10. Thompson's fourth kill in the span of seven serves, followed by a block from Bush and Wesson tied things at 12.
 
It was the first of five ties from that point to the end of the match as the teams traded two-point swings beyond the 15-point requirement. An HCU error and kill from Madisynne McQueen, her only one of the night but one of the most important, gave the Demons the first of two match points at 16-15. The Huskies held off the completion of the NSU comeback but Garza's 17^th kill provided the Demons a second chance for the win with a 17-16 edge. A Demon hitting error tied things at 17 setting up the block and kill that ended the comeback attempt.
 
Thompson and Garza both ended the night with 17 kills and a double-double. It is the fifth straight kill-dig double-double for Thompson. Svoboda topped her season high dig total set of 24 set on Thursday with 25. Deja Benjamin's five blocks in the match established a new season career high of 108 block, her second straight 100-block season and first at NSU.