The Lady Bison volleyball team is gearing up for the inaugural Great American Conference tournament championship beginning Friday, Nov. 11.Conference champions Arkansas Tech play host for the tournament in their hometown of Russellville, Ark.
The top eight teams in the league will battle it out in single elimination matches.There will be four quarterfinal matches on Friday and a pair of semi-final matches Saturday.The tournament champion will be crowned after the final match on Saturday at 7 p.m.GAC player of the week Amber Parker said that the tournament is evenly balanced and could lead to some entertaining games.
“The conference is very evenly distributed in talent,” Parker said. “This makes for an interesting tournament and I’m excited to see if there are any upsets.”
Harding enters the tournament as the No. 2 seed with a conference record of 13–3 and an overall record of 23–7. They have been paired with No. 7 seed Southwest Oklahoma State, which has a conference record of 5–11.This match takes place on Friday at 2:30 pm.
“I am excited that we get to play Southwest Oklahoma State for the first round;we match up well with them when both teams are playing well,” Parker said. “Our strategy is for each player to play well individually and for the team to come together as a whole and play well every set.”
If the Lady Bisons are successful in the first round of tournament play, they will advance and take on the winner of the third seed Southeastern Oklahoma State (10–6) versus No. 6 seed Southern Arkansas (7–9) in a semi-final match on Saturday.
“As long as each player does their job and we take advantage of the other team’s weaknesses, we have great potential to beat any team,” Parker said. “We have not reached our full potential yet but hopefully we will peak this weekend.”
All of the volleyball matches are being covered by the GAC sports network via online webcast.
