John Brown's volleyball team is hard to stop whenever its offense is clicking on all cylinders.
The Golden Eagles enjoyed a balanced hitting attack on Wednesday against Bacone (Okla.) and rolled to a 25-16, 25-10, 25-18 sweep of a Sooner Athletic Conference match inside Bill George Arena.
John Brown won its fifth straight match and improved to 21-5 overall and 10-2 in the Sooner Athletic Conference. The JBU victory also clinched a top four seed in the 2017 Sooner Athletic Conference Tournament, where the top four seeds will host the bottom four seeds in the quarterfinals next month.
Sophomore outside hitter Carly McKinney led John Brown with a match-high 16 kills and a .560 hitting percentage to go with a team-high 11 digs on the night. Junior outside hitter Bayli Reagan and sophomore middle Jessica Meyer each had 11 kills apiece, while sophomore Lindsey Davis added seven kills for the Golden Eagles.
Senior setter Alyssa Arnold passed out 42 assists and had 10 digs, while senior Beth Brankle of Siloam Springs also had 10 digs.
"I think one of the big things for us is -- similar to last year -- we have really good balance," said JBU head coach Ken Carver. "If you look at some teams in the conference, they're kind of over-relying on one particular player. For us on any given night, it could be Carly, it could be Jessica, it could be Bayli, it could be Lindsey. We can be hard to defend against in that regard. Alyssa does a really good job of distributing the ball around that, knowing that we do not just have to set one particular player over and over and over again to be successful."
McKinney had nine of her kills in the opening set of the match. JBU led 6-4 before going on a 13-5 run to take a 19-9 lead. Bacone, aided by two kills from Justine Sandoval and an ace serve by Keona Leano, scored five straight points to pull within 19-14, but McKinney went back to work on the outside, killing four out of the next five JBU points as the Golden Eagles won the first set.
"I just think our team has become a family and we couldn't do it without each other," said McKinney, who leads JBU on the season with 278 kills. "We execute well with each other. I really just think that we're close. We perform well and we work hard and it really pays off in practice. I definitely think we work hard in practice, and we practice a lot of first ball kills. We just compete, and we couldn't do it without our pass and our set. Just running a fast tempo really helps us with that."
JBU jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the second set, but Bacone answered with four straight point to take a 4-3 lead on a Sandoval kill.
But the Warriors served the next ball into the net, and that serving error kickstarted a 17-1 Golden Eagles run to take a 20-5 lead.
McKinney had two kills and two aces in that stretch, while Meyer had four kills and a block and Reagan also with four kills. Bacone got back within 23-10, but the Golden Eagles scored the next two points to take the second set.
The Golden Eagles established control in the third set, taking a 16-8 lead. Bacone hung around a bit, but kills from freshman outside hitter Taylor Glover and senior right side Karis Buff ended the match in a JBU sweep.
Teleza Collier and Sandoval each had seven kills to lead Bacone, which fell to 8-14 overall and 2-10 in the SAC. Leano added 17 assists for the Warriors, while Brittney Branch had 14 digs.
JBU will now turn its attention to its next match, which will be Friday at Oklahoma City, which was 17-5 overall and 12-1 in SAC play heading into Saturday's nonconference match against Our Lady of the Lake (Texas). The Stars and Southwestern Assemblies of God (Texas) were tied atop the conference standings with John Brown in third place. JBU handed Oklahoma City its only league loss on Sept. 15 by rallying for a 2-0 hole to defeat OCU 3-2 (25-27, 23-25, 25-17, 25-17, 15-13).
"I know they'll bring anybody that they can grab to come to their gym next week," Carver said. "That's one thing that we talked about after our Texas trip when we dropped those two matches (to Southwestern Assemblies of God on Sept. 29 and at Texas Wesleyan on Sept. 30). While we didn't want to overlook opponents in between them and OCU, we needed to get back and do us a little bit better and a little bit cleaner. We've done that over the last two and a half weeks. Knowing they'll have the weekend off to mentally and physically rest up, they know what's ahead of us. I think they're excited. We've been talking about it. I think we'll have a good week of practice and be ready to go get it."
McKinney believes the Golden Eagles are up for the challenge heading to Oklahoma City.
"I think we're ready," she said. "We work hard every day and now that we have a break this weekend, I think it will help us prepare for our opponent coming up, and so we really have to get down and get focused and kind of strategize with our next opponent."
Sports on 10/22/2017