After dropping the first two sets 18-25 and 22-25, the second-seeded Pioneers won the final three sets 25-21, 25-20 and 15-13 to advance to Sunday's championship match against top-seeded Wingate at 2:00 p.m. It will be the first-ever appearance in the SAC championship match for the Pioneers (25-5), while the Bulldogs will be seeking their fifth consecutive conference title.
Alyssa Raterman and Bailee Price shared the team lead in kills for the Pioneers with 15 each, while Price also contributed 22 digs and a pair of blocks. Also reaching double figures in kills for Tusculum were Allyson Ray with 12 and Sam Underwood and Rhayne Smitherman with 11 apiece.
Four players reached double figures in kills for the Lady Railsplitters (23-7), led by Kaitlin Walton's 11 kills and 10 each by Lauren Kiwacka, Ashley Knight and Candace Richardson. Knight added 19 digs while Kiwacka had a triple double with 27 assists and 17 digs to go with her 10 kills.
LMU took control early in the first set and was not threatened en route to a 25-18 victory. In the second set, the Pioneers battled back from a 22-18 deficit to pull within 23-22, but a service error and a kill by Knight gave the Lady Railsplitters a 25-22 win.
Tusculum scored the first three points in the third set, but fell behind 13-10 after a kill by Walton. The Pioneers answered with four straight points to go ahead 14-13 on a kill by Smitherman, part of a 9-1 run that gave Tusculum a 19-14 lead. LMU cut a 23-18 deficit to 23-21, but kills by Ray and Raterman gave Tusculum the 25-21 win.
The Pioneers also rallied in the fourth set after trailing 6-3, as two kills by Ray and one by Price knotted the score at 6-6. Tusculum broke an 11-11 tie with three straight points on kills by Raterman, Underwood and Raterman again, and traded points the rest of the set until an Underwood kill clinched the 25-20 set win and knotted the match at 2-2.
In the fifth and deciding set, the Pioneers bolted to a 4-1 lead and held a 6-3 advantage before the Lady Railsplitters came back to force ties at 6-6, 7-7 and 8-8. Back-to-back attack errors and a kill by Underwood gave the Pioneers an 11-8 lead, but a block and an kill by Walton brought LMU back within 11-10.
The Pioneers came up with the two biggest kills of the night as Raterman and Price put away shots to extend the Tusculum lead to 13-10, but the Lady Railsplitters would not roll over as a kill by Knight was followed by an ace then a kill by Brittany Pugh to deadlock the score at 13-13. Tusculum finally finished off the win behind a kill from Underwood and an ace by Hannah Campbell to clinch their spot in the finals.
Tusculum finished with a season-high 71 kills and hit .192 in the match, increasing their hitting percentage in each set from .159 up to .286 in the fifth set. Ashley Sarmiento finished with a season and career-high 52 assists in the victory, while Caitlyn Dean had 37 digs as she boosted her school and SAC single-season record total for digs in a season to 793. Sarmiento recorded 21 digs while Melanie Gibson added 12 to the Pioneers' total of 109.
Tusculum and Wingate will be meeting for the third time this season, as the Bulldogs claimed a 3-0 victory in Greeneville on September 18 and a 3-1 victory at home on October 23. The teams have never met in the SAC Tournament, though Wingate did defeat the Pioneers 3-0 in the first round of the NCAA Division II Southeast Regional last season.
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