STUFFING THE RUNNERS

Bobcats storm back to defeat UTSA 3-2 in exhibition match to start season

Rallying from a 2-1 deficit, Texas State defeated rival UTSA, 3-2, (25-22, 18-25, 21-25, 2515, 15-8) in an exhibition match, to kick off the 2023 season.

After weeks of playing against their own teammates, sophomore middle blocker Bailey Hanner was happy to see and compete against someone not in a Texas State uniform.

“It felt really good,” Hanner said. “At first, it was really nerve racking, but we just came together and told each other to just be competitive. We have been playing against ourselves for so long that we needed some real competition.”

Redshirt freshman Samantha Wunsch said she couldn’t agree more.

“We were super excited to play UTSA, and start our season,” Wunsch said. “We are now looking forward to the next competition.”

Despite the game not being counted towards the regular season, Head Coach Sean Hueit was happy to see where his team stood.

“That’s why we play these exhibition games,” Hueit said. “We want to get the nerves out and clean up the mistakes on our side.”

UTSA didn’t make it easy on their I-35 rivals, as the Roadrunners took both the second and third sets, to put the Bobcats in a 2-1 hole.

“They (UTSA) put a lot of pressure on us,” Hueit said. “That’s what we needed was someone on the other side of the net, to see where we are at. It wasn’t the cleanest volleyball, but I liked that we stayed composed. We felt that we had all this pressure on us and that we played too tense, which is where the errors came from.”

One of the keys for the Roadrunners' success was UTSA’s ability to break off major runs to put the Bobcats behind the eight ball.

“I thought after Set 1 we backed off of our serving,” Hueit said. “We were playing catch up the whole time, whereas we wanted to be the aggressor. They did a good job of slowing us down and recovering. … I thought we could have snuck in that third to potentially put away in the fourth set.”

With the Bobcats having a roster filled with players that haven’t seen much playing, Hueit expected there to be a few bumps in the road.

“We know that there are going to be growing pains,” Hueit said. “We have a lot of kids on the court that haven’t had a ton of minutes. So it was really good for them to see that when it gets hard. Even when we are down, we can gut it up and go. I felt that we worked so hard in that third set to comeback, but we gave them three errors in a row. That’s a gut punch.”

Texas State rallied back in the third set by dominating the Roadrunners 25-15, to force the final fifth set.

In the fifth, Texas State knocked off UTSA once more, 15-8, to win the match.

For the Bobcats, the ability to continue fighting back while playing less tense was the key to the win.

“The coaches just told us to keep swinging,” Hanner said. “Trust that your teammates are going to cover you and we bought into that. It changed everything and we felt a lot looser. We were actually having fun out there in the fourth set. Overall we just looked better.”

That growing confidence is a key the Bobcats look to use when Texas State starts the regular season at the Tennessee Classic in Knoxville.

“We talked about playing looser with more confidence,” Wunsch said. “Rather than being scared to make an error, we knew that our teammates had our back. If you don’t get one point, you get the next one.”

The Bobcats begin the regular season against the Marist Red Foxes this Friday at 9 a.m., before playing Tennessee at 5 p.m. later in the day.

cmcwilliams@sanmarcosrecord.com Twitter: @ColtonBMc