The Frogs bounced back from a conference loss last Saturday in tremendous fashion Wednesday, besting Baylor in five sets (18-25, 25-20, 22-25, 25-21, 15-10).
The match teetered like a seesaw until the end with both teams splitting the first four sets. Baylor took sets one and three and TCU took sets two and four before TCU brought it home in the fifth set 15-10.
“We knew it was going to be a fight, it was a great win against a great team with a great staff and we look forward to seeing if that continues in the future,” head coach and Director of Volleyball Jill Kramer said.
Kramer said she felt that this was a huge win in terms of recruiting, “Having always recruited Texas, at some point I had recruited just about everyone who played on that court, so it was great to see the team rise to the occasion.” “You just knew that there were a lot of great volleyball players on that court on both sides of the net,” Kramer said.
The turning point of the match was when the Frogs lost a big lead to drop the third but came roaring back to close out the fourth set to force a winner-take-all fifth.
Kramer told the team that they were going to come out on top, “I just told them to stay with it and that we were going to do this, I think the repetition of belief with meaning causes this team to rise to the challenge every time.”
Game attendance also boasted recognition. 2,229 people, or about a fifth of TCU’s total student population, came to watch the Horned Frogs take down the Bears, the second-largest attendance mark in program history. Kramer believes the wall-to-wall audience made a significant impact on the game.
“Our crowd always brings it and we feel it,” Kramer said.
TCU’s standout was outside hitter, Ashley Smith, who led the team in kills for the 10th time this season with 17, in addition to a team-high 13 digs for her 10th double-double of the season. Smith cranked it up in the latter stages of the match, which coincided with TCU’s surge to victory.
“She’s great in the fifth set, she’s actually great all the time,” Kramer said. “We just kept telling our setter to keep setting Ashley, she started off a little slow, but then she got aggressive and really got going, when she gets in her comfort zone she’s awesome and we just keep telling her to do what she’s doing.”
The win moved TCU to 15-5 overall on the season and to fourth place in the Big 12 standings with a 5-3 conference record. The Frogs return action on Wednesday, October 28 back at the University Rec Center against the No. 2 ranked Texas Longhorns at 6:30 p.m.