Kingsville - The Texas A&M-Kingsville volleyball team fell in five hard-fought sets to the Midwestern State Mustangs to end the Lone Star Conference Challenge and the Javelinas five-match win streak.
After grabbing a two-set lead over the Mustangs, the road team won a back-and-forth third set, 25-23, before grabbing momentum and taking the fourth and fifth sets as well. Junior defensive specialist/libero
Monique Gonzalez posted another excellent match in the back row, putting up a career-high 28 digs along with four assists.
"I mean, obviously I'm disappointed," Head Coach
Tanya Allen-Gonzalez said. "I think there was a lot that we kind of let down. Our ball control faded a little bit, and we let a lot of easy plays go. So a lack of preparation, a lack of focus, whatever you want to call it, I think that it was things that we could have controlled and we didn't."
Six different Javelinas had at least eight kills in the loss, led by another great performance from senior right side/setter
Rylan Pollard, who had 15 kills to go along with 25 assists, seven digs, three block assists, and two service aces. Fellow senior RS
Kendall Harrington continued her strong 2025 campaign with 11 kills on .296, while senior outside hitter
Kerigan Baumgartner collected a career-high 18 digs to go along with eight kills, three assists, an ace, and a block assist. Senior S
Elisa Carli once again led the team in assists with 27, while adding a kill, an ace, and nine digs.
The Javelinas started the match red-hot offensively, notching an incredible .560 team attack percentage in the first set, before putting up a strong .278 with a single-set match-high 16 team kills in the second set. After Midwestern was able to eek out a tight win in what could have been the deciding third set for TAMUK, however, the Javelinas' offense struggled, totalling 16 kills on 59 swings with 10 errors across the fourth and fifth sets.
"Obviously we want to get better defensively, but we just know serve receive is going to be top priority," Allen-Gonzalez said. "I think that's every team in the LSC is going to be focusing on those things, they want to win that. Our side-out percentage has to stay high. If we're focusing so much on the defense, trying to win with defense, I think that we will be passive. So we've got to have a healthy balance where we're focused on the defense but we're still siding out at a high percentage.
Kingsville will be back on the hardwood on Tuesday as the team begins conference play on the road with a 6:00 p.m. match against Texas Woman's in Denton. Though TAMUK has already faced off with LSC opponents in both the Dustdevils and the Mustangs, Tuesday's match will be the first that will count toward the teams' conference records.
Â
