North Texas Daily

Kyle Youmans / Staff Writer

The Mean Green volleyball team played on the road Friday night against the University of Southern Mississippi (14-8, 3-2), and came away with four set loss (27-29, 25-22, 21-25, 23-25).

The Mean Green (12-7, 3-3) came in to the game on a two game winning streak.  But the team struggled Friday night as it had a .233 hitting percentage and 23 errors, which was enough to cost it the victory.

“People were just getting in people’s way,” senior outside hitter Hanna Forst said. “We really struggled with the fundamentals of volleyball and we really did not succeed in the areas that we need to in order to win a conference match. It was really frustrating cause alongside that we made really good plays.”

North Texas trailed for most of the first set until it was able to take the lead 20-19 before losing the set in extra points. The second set was a different story as the Mean Green took an 8-7 lead and never trailed after that to tie the match at 1-1. After that set, head coach Andrew Palileo said that the momentum began to shift to Southern Miss.

“I think we became a little bit predictable,” Palileo said. “Whenever we get in trouble we tend to send the ball to the outside and we got them a little excited. We ended up flipping the game plan a little to try and help with that but we couldn’t pass the ball well enough to be effective.”

The final two sets were both similar in the fact that they were close, back and forth battles. Both ended in Southern Miss outlasting the Mean Green and eventually taking the match.

“I feel like that we didn’t really work as a team tonight,” freshman middle blocker Amanda Chamberlain said. “Some people just weren’t in the right spots and it really showed on the court. If we are going to play well on Sunday, we really need to focus better and fix some of tonight’s problems.”

North Texas will continue their road trip when it takes on the conference leading Western Kentucky University Sunday at noon.