photo by: Chance Parker/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas wins the third set against Purdue on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, in Lawrence.

The Kansas volleyball team has lived up to expectations early in its Big 12 slate, sweeping UCF in its nationally televised league opener (25-16, 31-29, 25-22) on Wednesday and taking down a solid Houston team 3-1 (22-25, 25-14, 25-17, 26-24) on Friday to advance to 11-1 overall on the season.

While the Jayhawks didn’t have to go five sets in either matchup — and in fact still haven’t been taken that far in a match all season — the action at Horejsi Family Volleyball Arena was not without its intrigue.

The extra-points second set against UCF took everything the Jayhawks had. After KU went up 24-23 on a kill by London Davis, the Knights had to stave off four set points and the Jayhawks two before, with KU trailing 29-28, Caroline Bien secured back-to-back kills and Camryn Turner sealed the deal on a service ace.

Then, against Houston, KU came back from dropping the first game. It was a reasonably familiar situation for the Jayhawks after they had done the same on the road at Duke and Marquette during nonconference play.

It certainly helped in Friday’s case that the Cougars went from hitting .343 in their narrow first set, aided by a game-clinching 7-2 run, to minus-0.031 in the following frame, including nine attack errors.

Middle blocker Toyosi Onabanjo, currently one of the national leaders in hitting, had 13 kills at a .545 rate on the night as KU won each of the next three sets — though the final game, a 26-24 result, required extra points again.

“I think we need to understand we’re going to get everybody’s best shot,” KU coach Ray Bechard said in a press release. “We go through the coaching line, and they all say ‘hey, that’s the best we played’ so we’re bringing out the best in folks. And we got to respond to that.”

The Jayhawks should expect a similar treatment as they go out on the road for three straight matches, even beginning with a pair of teams that have started Big 12 play 0-2 and were picked to finish 10th and 14th in the league, respectively, in Colorado and West Virginia.

KU will make its first trip to Boulder, Colorado, after the Buffaloes rejoined the conference this year, for its lone match of the week on Thursday. The Jayhawks then have a week off before WVU on Oct. 10 and Cincinnati (10-2, 1-0 Big 12) two days later.

Soccer drops another close match

Coming off perhaps its best win of the season, 4-0 over UCF on Thursday night, the KU soccer team set out to Boulder to play a nationally ranked Colorado squad on Sunday.

The Jayhawks didn’t hold their usual edge in shots on goal, but for the fourth time in 13 matches this year, they allowed a goal in the 75th minute or later that yielded an adverse result. This time, CU’s Jace Holley scored in the 81st off a long throw-in to consign KU to a 1-0 defeat against the 16th-ranked Buffaloes.

Head coach Nate Lie said in a press release that he was proud of his team’s effort in a hot, high-altitude game but that he was “getting frustrated about these road games where we do enough to get points and then we find ways to give them away.”

“What I just told them after the game is when we face moments of adversity, when we get tired, too many times we become either defeatist or forget what got us here in the first place,” Lie said. “We lose our identity, lose our attention to detail.”

KU fell to 5-4-3 overall and 2-3 in Big 12 play and will host Oklahoma State on Saturday.

Cross-country

The Jayhawks competed at the Gans Creek Classic hosted by Missouri on Friday in two men’s events and one women’s race.

The men competed in a pair of 8,000-meter races. The Division I 8K competition saw KU finish 14th of 37 teams, led by 39th-place junior Tanner Talley, who finished with a time of 23 minutes, 58.6 seconds; in the open race, sophomore Gabe Birkmeier’s 77th-place time of 25:30.9 exceeded those of his two teammates.

The women’s 6,000-meter open race also featured a trio of Jayhawks, with sophomore Elena Villareal on top in 70th at 23:10.5.