COLUMBIA. MO – Closing out.

It’s become an abiding issue for Missouri Volleyball all year, whether it be a set or a game as a whole, the 2025 Tigers have seemingly found their bugaboo. 

It all seemed to come to a boiling point Sunday afternoon at the Hearnes Center during a 3-2 reverse sweep defeat at the hands of the Oklahoma Sooners. 

In a contest, that the Tigers once held a 2-0 advantage, but Missouri quickly found itself floundering in a momentum swing through the final three sets. 

“I don’t know if it was a change in mentality (for us),” said Missouri head coach Dawn Sullivan. “I thought Oklahoma did a really nice job changing and just bringing more. And I thought they started being really relentless on defense and really scrappy. I don’t know if we responded all that well. We didn’t respond when they started picking up, and we didn’t push back. We kind of just let them push, and we just kept playing the same.”

Things weren’t as bleak from the jump, however, as the Tigers had the edge over the Sooners in an ultra-competitive opening set that included 18 tie scores and nine lead changes. That back-and-forth play persisted as Mizzou came away with a gritty 30-28 win in set one. 

And while it hasn’t been the norm for Mizzou, they did show just how capable they are of hanging in and competing late in sets.

Though, as the second set came around, it looked as though that momentum from the win may have carried over enough to help Missouri run away with things. 

And for the moment, it did.

The Tigers’ lead reached as great as 10 in the set as nothing got past the digs of Maya Sands, while Caylen Alexander was as powerful as always from the outside with 18 kills on the day. However, as it appeared Mizzou would close things out in short order, the Sooners embarked on a 7-0 run to bring a 23-13 lead to just 23-20 for Missouri. 

The Tigers would briefly wake up and pull away one more time to take the set, but not before a seed of momentum was planted for Oklahoma. 

“In that second set, that’s really where I thought they started getting a bit more relentless,” said Sullivan. “We just stayed the same, but this team is incredible, and this is what I’ve learned about them: they can really do a good job of taking over matches, and you’ve seen that. I really think that is what you’re going to see from them is learning how to do that really well as we continue to play these games tight. That’s how you learn, and that’s what I really am excited about.”

The Tigers have played more close sets than most this year. They lost just one set by more than five points against Oklahoma (a shortened to-15 fifth set, 15-9). And looking back, it’s hard to forget the Tigers pushing a top-five Stanford team to extras on multiple occasions and again doing it twice against the nation’s number-two team in Texas during SEC play just a week ago. 

Nonetheless, while Missouri has competed at a high clip in a multitude of these matches, it still has yet to win a majority of them – a flaw that should continue to be pointed out until it is corrected. 

When the third set came around, it was plain to see the momentum shifting on the court. As an early lead that grew to as many as three for the Tigers began to fade away. The turning point was a 6-0 run for Oklahoma that saw a 12-9 Missouri lead be flipped to a 15-12 Sooners advantage. 

While the set went on, it felt there were just too many holes for Sands and the Tigers’ backline to cover, which put a slowdown on the transition game in a set where Missouri gained just 10 kills, a spot where the Tigers struggled all game. 

Missouri had a game high 13 kills in the first set, which was ticked down to 12 in the second and then 10 in the third and fourth, while the Tigers mustered a mere five kills in the fifth and final set. 

“You’ve got to be able to take that big swing,” said Sullivan. “You’ve got to be able to work hard and transition to continue to make yourself available to take those swings. I think Maya is doing a wonderful job in the back row. How do we continue to get more people to dig balls? How do we communicate? Communicate and dig more balls up? I think that’s just really important for us.”

The fourth set would be more of the same, aside from the fact that the Tigers led just four times, for one-point intervals at that. Oklahoma’s swing continued while Missouri tried to find its stride, but was never able to get its legs back under itself, seemingly.  

And as quickly as the fifth set came, it seemed to pass just the same. As Oklahoma took a 3-0 lead, Missouri would never challenge so much as lead in the set while the Sooners’ hot streak carried them to the victory. 

“I thought early in this match we were very good,” said Sullivan. “We only had one hitting error in that first set. I thought they did a really nice job after that. Could we pass and be in the system to allow ourselves to spread out that offense well enough. So we’ll continue to get back to work in the gym. I think we know that in those sets we lost, we just made too many errors, and that is from a couple of different things. So we need to look at how we really stay composed on that service line and communicate in those seams and control those balls so that we can run a really balanced offense versus just being one dimensional.”

One-dimensional is something that will not work against a No. 23-ranked Florida team, when the Tigers make the trip down to Gainesville next Friday to face the Gators for a 6 p.m. tip.