Box Score NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Belmont (21-8, 12-2 A-Sun) defeated ETSU in five sets in the conference semifinals. The Bruins advance to the finals to face Lipscomb at 3 p.m. on Saturday. It will be the fifth straight year that Belmont and Lipscomb will meet in the tournament and the second time they'll meet in the finals. Lipscomb holds a 3-2 advantage over the Bruins in tournament play.
Belmont won the first set close, 27-25, before dropping sets two and three to go into the fourth frame trailing ETSU 2-1. The Bruins played with a sense of urgency in the fourth set, dominating 25-13 to force a fifth set. Belmont picked up where they left off, riding momentum for a 15-6 win in the final set.
"This is pretty typical of what this year has been," Head Coach Deane Webb said of his team's roller coaster performance. "This has not been a year where we've come out and destroyed a lot of teams. We've had a lot of hard fought wins and tonight was no different. It really wouldn't have been appropriate if we had come in here and just cruised through a match because that hasn't been our year. There have been a lot of hard fought battles and our team really battled hard tonight and really fought. I would say we played just well enough to win. We had a number of attackers who usually attack for a higher percentage who just had a rough night tonight, but Allison (McCoy) and Jen (Myer) were really spectacular. I didn't notice until now that Scarlet (Gable) hit over .200 and had 15 digs. She started off really shaky in the first couple of games and settled down. Al and Jen grew up tonight and became game changing players in our program."
The Bruins were powered by 20 kills from sophomore Allison McCoy (Huntington Beach, Calif.), who hit .514 for the match and added three block assists. McCoy's previous career high had been 12 kills in a match, a number she had bested by the third set. On a night when senior Maggie Johnson (Naperville, Ill.) struggled offensively at times, the Bruins turned to their sophomores, getting 14 kills from Jen Myer (New Braunfels, Texas), 59 assists from Hannah Miranda (Covington, La.), and 24 digs from libero Jamie Lundstrom (La Grange, Ill.). Freshman Scarlet Gable recovered from a slow start to post 11 kills. Johnson finished the night with her 18th double-double of the season with 18 kills and 13 digs, but hit just .109 for the match.
"Tonight she (McCoy) was the difference between winning and losing," Webb said. "If Al doesn't play like that, we don't win. Jen got it going and we started getting her more balls and Al had it going all night. Those two guys, if they don't play just at incredible levels, our season's over. What's great about those two kids is that they knew that. There came a point in the match where I pulled those two aside and said, 'it's your time. We trust you and we're going to get you a lot of balls.' And we did and boy, they grew up. As sophomores, to be here in a conference semifinal---you've got a sophomore libero, a sophomore setter, two sophomore attackers---who all played great games, it's exciting not just for tonight, but for our future."
In a match that featured the league's top blocking team in ETSU and the conference team leader in opponent hitting percentage and digs in Belmont, the defenses were very much at the center of the match, with the two liberos providing lots of entertaining hustle plays throughout the match. Lundstrom, who received stitches prior to the match after an off-court injury, led both teams with 24 digs, while combing with ETSU libero Kiley Tamblyn for 45 total digs on the night. Lundstrom was named the Libero of the Year by conference coaches earlier this week and showcased her speed and skills against ETSU.
"We started the night really not defending well," Webb said. "For the first three games, they hit .290 and up, which is just spectacular numbers on their side and we really were not defending well. After game three, we really got things turned around and we started blocking better and defending better in the back row. Jamie had a great night, not just in defending, but in serve-receive. She was steady all night long and it was a great effort and I'm really proud of what she did tonight."
The turning point in the match came between the third and fourth set, when Belmont seemed to flip a switch and suddenly become competitive again. A combination of adjustments, urgency, and a determination not to end the season just yet helped the Bruins get off to a fast start in the fourth set and they never looked back.
"I think it's all those things," Webb said of the change in his team between sets. "I think it's us recognizing that we were not in a good place emotionally. We were doing some things okay for parts of the match, but we just weren't emotionally in a good place and we had to get there. We talked about that briefly. They're a good team with high team chemistry and when that's the case, it doesn't take something crazy or a coach going bananas or anything like that, it was just more of a little adjustment to where we were and they did that. They came out and the defense changed and from that point forward, ETSU hit .000 in set four and negative in set five. We've been a really defensive team all year long and we just took the first three sets off tonight and luckily got back to doing what we needed to do and hopefully we continue that tomorrow."
Saturday's final with Lipscomb will be the rubber match for the 2011 Battle of the Boulevard. Both teams won at home earlier this season, with Lipscomb taking a five match win in Allen Arena and Belmont taking a four set win in the Curb Event Center. Lipscomb won in three sets in the first semifinal to set up a rubber match with the Bruins. The match will be Belmont's last chance at an Atlantic Sun title and will be the Lady Bison's fourth straight appearance in conference finals. The Bruins will need their A-game against Lipscomb to claim their third conference tournament title.
"It is what most people expected," Webb said of the Belmont-Lipscomb final. "It has been five years in a row where we have faced Lipscomb in the conference tournament with the winner of that match going on to win the tournament even though most of those matches have been in the semifinals. We know that we have to be great. We were not great tonight. We were great maybe for two games. We're going to need to be that the entire match tomorrow. We know that they are maybe a higher level opponent than what we faced today and we'll need to have a number of players contributing at a high level tomorrow.
The action gets underway at 3 p.m. with the winner advancing to the NCAA Tournament. The match will be broadcast for free on ASun.TV. Links to livestats, video, and full recaps, as well as all schedule information, are available at www.belmontbruins.com.
