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Portageville takes second place in BCT
MALDEN, Mo - The Malden Green Wave varsity volleyball team received offensive contributions from just about everyone in uniform with a conference tournament championship on the line on its home floor Thursday night.
Six Malden players combined to tally 13 kills and five Green Wave players combined to record 10 ace serves.
The end result was a fourth straight conference tournament championship at the varsity level for the Green Wave.
Top-seeded Malden outlasted the third-seeded Portageville Bulldogs 25-13, 25-16 in the Bootheel Conference Tournament title game.
"Our goal coming in was to make Portageville have to play defense often," Malden coach Brittany Crane said. "We decided to focus on our serving and hitting, and I think it worked out for us tonight."
Portageville trailed Malden by only one at 8-7, but struggled with attack errors late in the first set. The Green Wave scored three straight points on attack errors and Madi Earnheart followed with a kill to increase Malden's lead to 12-7 and force a Portageville timeout.
Portageville continued to trail by five at 17-12 after it traded the next 10 points with Malden. The Green Wave followed by scoring eight of the final nine points of the first set for a 12-point win.
Portageville committed nine attack errors in the opening set.
"We didn't pass well at all tonight and that really cost us," Portageville coach Barry Branscum said. "It took us out of our offense. Malden created that with good serves and good swings. They kept us out of our offense and we struggled to respond once they took us out of our game."
Portageville jumped out to an early 8-6 lead in the second set. The Green Wave followed with a 10-1 run to move ahead 16-9 and led by at least six the rest of the way.
Portageville seniors Adrienne Duncan and Kelsi Jones did their best to jump-start their offense.
Duncan tallied a team-high seven kills and Jones added four more kills.
"They are our two seniors," Branscum said. "When we got in trouble we tried to get them the ball as many times as possible. But our passes were all over the place and we struggled to get easy offense, like we normally do because of our size."
Earnheart tallied a team-high five kills for the Green Wave.
Three other Malden players recorded two kills and two Malden players had one kill.
"We like to switch it up," Crane said. "We like to set right side, middle and outside as opposed to just sticking to one side with our hitting. Everyone is hitting and ready to attack in our offense. Most of our girls can hit so it's a good offense for this team."
Malden improves to 17-8-1 with the victory and Portageville drops to 17-10-2.
Crane, who took over the volleyball program this season, said she is glad to keep the conference tournament streak alive but hopes to make bigger noise in the postseason.
"This is my first year being a part of it," Crane said. "I feel like we are holding up the legacy so far. But we have to keep working. We really want to win a district title. I'm glad we won, but we are hungry for a district title."
Portageville and Malden could square off again in two weeks in Class 2, District 1 at Portageville. Malden has received the top-seed and Portageville is seeded third in the seven-team district.
"We've only got one game next week so we will have a couple days off we haven't had in a long time," Branscum said. "We will come back strong next Thursday night on Senior Night, which is also our Pink Out Game. Then we host the district the following Monday.
"We are excited to have it at home," he continued. "It's our third time in the last four years to host and we feel honored people want to come to our place and play. We play pretty well at home and it will be a pretty good tournament because the top five teams are pretty darn good."
Top-seeded Malden outlasted second-seeded Caruthersville 26-24, 25-12 in the junior varsity final
"Our junior varsity continues to improve every game," Crane said. "We have a great deal of work to do over the summer to replace our seniors after this year, but we are ready to do that work."