Northwestern State volleyball looks to continue its run of impressive performances on Tuesday night against Texas A&M-Commerce.
The Demons (7-7, 3-0) carry a season-long seven-match winning streak into Tuesday night’s match looking to extend the number to eight against the Lions (5-10, 1-1), which would match the longest overall winning streak and serve as the best start to conference play in program history.
First serve is set for 6:30 p.m. and will be streamed live on ESPN+.
“You serve well and aggressive, and those can be two different things, it just makes things so much easier from a defensive standpoint which then makes it easier offensively,” head coach Sean Kiracofe said. “That’s the way I want to start everything off. I understand the argument for serving with high efficiency, don’t make errors there and give away free points but I feel like the aggression we have there starts the ball rolling for everything.”
The Demons have done both with regularity over the past seven matches creating a domino effect of production and in turn wins.
Reaghan Thompson had three aces in the win on Saturday against Nicholls as the Demons reached double-figure aces for the second match this season with 10. Piper Boydstun started the match with three straight aces, giving her 19 on the season and moving her to the top of the SLC ace leaderboard. Amina Attra also matched her career high with three in the third set.
NSU ranks third in the conference as a team with 1.46 aces per set with 67 total.
“I was always taught the name of the game is pass and serve,” Thompson said with a laugh. “We have a lot of great servers on our team, and we have a lot of confidence within each other.”
NSU’s effectiveness from the start of every rally has led to potentially one of the most dynamic offenses in the conference. The Demons have hit better than .240 as a team in four of the past five matches and .280 or higher in each of the past three matches.
“We’ve been able to spread things out offensively to several people and done a great job at that,” Kiracofe said. “But what I think is more important is we’ve had someone really kind of run away with it and be the point scorer for us.
“There are going to be times when we match up with different people and we’ll need someone to step up and score more than what their normal is. This year different people in different matches have stepped up and given us double-digit kills and been like just keep giving me the ball. That’s something we haven’t a lot of in the past few years but we do this year and it’s great.”
Six different players recorded four or more kills against Nicholls, led by Breanna Burrell with nine. This was the second match in the last seven where the Demons won without having a player record double-figure kills.
After a close 25-23 first set against the Colonels that saw NSU commit seven attack errors, three of them unforced, the Demons committed just seven total attack errors, and three unforced in the final two sets combined.
NSU is making its second trip to Commerce in program history after the two teams split the series a year ago, each winning on their home floor.
