LAWRENCE, Kan. — Kansas opened Big 12 Conference play with a sweep of Houston, winning 31-29, 25-20 and 25-15 on Friday night at Horejsi Family Volleyball Arena.<\/p>\n
The Jayhawks improved to 8-3 overall and 1-0 in Big 12 play, while the Cougars fell to 7-5 and 0-1 in conference. Kansas finished with 45 kills as a team and hit .228, led by Taylor Stanley<\/a>, who paced all players with 17 kills alongside\u00a0six blocks. Reese Ptacek<\/a> was all over the stat sheet with six kills, a match-high eight blocks and two aces, while Logan Bell<\/a> also chipped in six kills, two aces and three blocks. Sophomore setter Reese Messer<\/a> ran the KU offense with 35 assists, and libero Olivia Hasbrook<\/a> led the team with 13 digs and two aces.<\/p>\n Kansas jumped out to an early lead in the opening set, with Aisha Aiono<\/a> delivering the opening kill before Ptacek followed with back-to-back points on a kill and a block to make it 3-0. Hasbrook then ripped off back-to-back aces to extend the lead to 5-0, and the 7-0 start forced a Houston timeout. Bell’s block made it 10-2, and Messer added an ace to push the lead to 14-7 before Stanley’s block made it 15-7. A cross-court kill from Bell kept the Jayhawks comfortably ahead at 19-13, but the Cougars responded with three straight points to cut it to 19-16 and force a Kansas timeout. Back-to-back kills from Bell pushed the lead back to 21-17 before Houston answered with a 4-0 run of its own to pull within one at 22-21. Ptacek’s slide kill made it 23-21, but the set tightened from there, with the two teams trading points to tie it at 23-23, 26-26 and 27-27. Kansas battled through the extra points before\u00a0closing out the extended opening set 31-29.<\/p>\n The second set saw the teams deadlocked at 7-7 before Houston grabbed a 10-9 edge. Bell’s ace tied it back up at 10-10, and Nelson’s kill put Kansas ahead to stay at 11-10. The Jayhawks carried a 14-13 lead into the media timeout, and Grace Nelson<\/a> later tipped one off a Cristin Cline<\/a> assist to make it 21-18. Ptacek then took over down the stretch, coming up with a block to make it 22-19 and following it with an ace to push the lead to 23-19. Nelson’s block set up set point, and an attack error capped the set for Kansas, 25-20.<\/p>\n Houston jumped out to a 3-0 lead to start the third set, but Stanley answered with a kill down the line to trim the deficit to 3-5. Cline then delivered back-to-back setter dumps to even the score at 5-5 and Ptacek’s ace made it 9-7.\u00a0A\u00a0big swing from Aiono extended the lead to 13-11 and Kansas carried a 15-11 advantage into the technical timeout.<\/p>\n Stanley came out of the break with a kill to make it 16-11. Messer’s setter dump capped a 5-0 run and made it 17-11, forcing a Houston timeout. Stanley then delivered back-to-back aces during a 4-0 run to push the lead to 21-12, and she closed out the match with a big cross-court kill for the sweep, 25-15.<\/p>\n Kansas returns to action Sunday at Texas Tech at 1 p.m. CT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAWRENCE, Kan. — Kansas opened Big 12 Conference play with a sweep of Houston, winning 31-29, 25-20 and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-448224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}