CONWAY, Ark.—McNeese volleyball attempted to do something no conference team was able to do all season here Friday at the Southland Conference Tournament, hand regular season champion and the tournament's top seed Texas A&M-Corpus Christi its first loss of the season. Despite a scrappy performance by the Cowgirls, the result was the same as it has been all season.
 
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (22-7) continued its dominance with a 3-1 (25-19, 25-13, 20-25, 25-17) victory over eighth seed McNeese to eliminate the Cowgirls from the tournament and put an end to their season.
 
McNeese scrapped and clawed throughout the entire match in what some may have thought would be a dominating match by the Islanders. The Cowgirls also lost to Texas A&M-CC in straight sets in Corpus Christi two weeks ago.
 
"Man-what a way to finish up the season," said head coach Ashleigh Fitzgerald. "These kids, led by our seniors, played their guts out. We are proud of the character they displayed today and throughout the year and we are excited about the personnel we will return next year."
 
McNeese opened the match by taking an early 5-2 lead then extended it to 7-4, forcing the Islanders to call a timeout.  The Cowgirls held the lead until the Islander tied the set at 14 all before going on a run behind the serve of Kristyn Nicholson to outscore McNeese 11-5 to take the first set, 25-19.
 
TAMU-CC picked up where they left off in the first set and opened up the second set by scoring the first five points. McNeese would cut the Islander lead to seven points (18-11) on back-to-back aces by setter Alexandra Aguilera. The Cowgirls were held to two points the rest of the set as the Islanders took a 2-0 lead into intermission with a 25-19 second set win.
 
McNeese was determined to send the match to a fourth set came out in the third set by taking a 3-1 lead. After six ties, a kill by Jenny D'Alessandro gave McNeese a 15-14 lead and one it wouldn't give up. The Islanders did get a close as one point (20-19) following a Cowgirl error but head coach Ashleigh Fitzgerald called a timeout to settle down the Cowgirls. The timeout seemed to help as McNeese went on a 5-1 run to take the fifth set 25-20.
 
The Islanders opened the fourth set by scoring the first five points to take a 5-0 lead. Trailing 6-1, McNeese scored six straight points to tie the set at seven all but that would be as close as McNeese would get as Texas A&M-CC would keep their tournament title hopes alive with a 25-17 fifth set win.
 
The careers of seniors Bridget Justis, Hailee Showers and Rebecca Korenek came to an end but all three played extremely well in the match.
 
Korenek led McNeese with 14 kills while Justis tied for a match high 30 digs. Showers ended the match with a .263 hitting percent with five kills in 19 attempts without an error. Freshmen Keegan Nelms and Angela McGownd both picked up 11 digs apiece while Aguilera ended the match with a double double (31 assists, 10 digs).