SAUL LOEB/Arizona Daily Wildcat Freshman Angie Ayers attempts a kill in Saturday's second round match against the Texas Longhorns. The Wildcats won a hard-fought five game match this weekend to advance to the Sweet 16. They will play play Minnesota this weekend on Stanford's campus in Palo Alto.

Nobody said getting to the Final Four was going to be easy, and Arizona got all it could handle from Texas in the second round of the NCAA volleyball tournament.

The Longhorns were one game away from pulling the upset, but head coach David Rubio rallied the Wildcats, and they came back to win 3-2 (30-25, 25-30, 18-30, 15-9) to advance to its fourth-consecutive Sweet 16.

"We are very excited about winning a very hard fought match," Rubio said. "Texas played a great match. They did a nice job tactically against us, but it is nice to move on to the round of 16. We are really excited about that."

Arizona next takes the court this weekend as they travel to the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, Calif., to take on No. 7 seeded Minnesota in the round of 16.

Arizona came out and won the first game, but even though Arizona tallied the win, the Longhorns outplayed the Wildcats.

Freshman Kim Glass was the difference-maker in the first game as she tallied eight kills.

With Glass dominating at the net, Texas head coach Jerritt Elliot devised a strategy that rattled the young All-American candidate.

When the Longhorns were on serve, Elliot told Longhorn players to serve at Glass in order to force her to play defense as well as offense.

Elliot knew that Glass's one glaring weakness is in her inability to dig serves, and Elliott's strategy turned the tide for the Longhorns as they won the second and third games.

"Glass is a young gifted athlete," Elliot said. "She still has a lot to learn. Our plan was to put pressure on her, and it was effective."

The constant attacking of Glass on the serve began to wear on the freshman, and Rubio begin to see Glass lose confidence in the third game. He decided to sit Glass out for the majority of that game.

"My teammates really helped me pick myself up," Glass said. "Texas targeted me, but I'm used to that. I think I was frustrated with myself. I had a few errors, and it got

to me and I was battling my confidence."

The third game was a real struggle for the Wildcats, as Texas built a commanding 10-point lead at 13-23, which led to an Arizona timeout.

With the game out of hand, Rubio preached to the Wildcats to forget about the score and just fight and battle on every point in order to gain momentum going into the fourth game.

"I didn't care what the score was," Rubio said. "I believe that the team that competes the hardest will win. I told them to continue to battle and play with great intensity so it carries over to the fourth game."

After the timeout, Arizona won four-straight points to cut the lead to 17-23, but could pull no closer.

The Wildcat's struggles during the first three games of the match were due to Texas' defense, which held UA to a 159 hitting percentage.

That all changed in the fourth game.

With the Wildcats on the brink of elimination, seniors Lisa Rutledge and Shannon Torregrosa stepped up their play and regained control of the match, first by giving Glass a pick up, and then taking it to the Longhorns.

"Shannon and Lisa really showed their senior leadership," Rubio said. "We needed those two, and without them we would not have won the match."

Arizona lost the first point of fourth game, and that was the last time that the Wildcats would trail in the match.

"We have had to battle out like this many times this season," freshman middle blocker Bre Ladd said. "Each one of those battlers were learning processes. That fifth game, we were saying that it's all or nothing, and we have to go out and have fun."

The Wildcats dominated the Longhorns in the final two games to pull off the comeback and advance to the round of 16.

"I think we gave Arizona opportunities to get us back on our heels," UT sophomore Kathy Hahn said. "We expected them to quit instead of us finishing the game. Arizona is a very good team, and we couldn't afford to do that."

The story of the match was Arizona's offensive efficiency in the final two games.

The Wildcats hit .159 in the first three games, but their average hitting percentage in games four and five was over .430.