Sports in brief: MU volleyball extends streak

The No. 17 Missouri volleyball team won its seventh consecutive game Saturday afternoon with a 30-26, 34-32, 30-22 victory at Iowa State.

Freshman Julianna Klein led the Tigers (13-4, 7-1) with a team-high 15 kills, while Nicole Wilson and Na Yang chipped in with 14 and 12 kills, respectively. The win was the Tigers 19th straight over the Cyclones (11-6, 3-4).

Mizzou will return to the court Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. for a showdown at the Hearnes Center with No. 1 Nebraska.

MU SWIMMING: The Missouri men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams each notched victories Saturday at the second annual Show-Me Showdown at the Mizzou Aquatic Center Saturday.

The men’s team defeated second-place Drury by 86 points, while the women’s team topped Drury by 41 points.

The women won in seven of their first eight events and 13 of 16 overall. For the men’s team, freshman Martin Cernansky swept the 50 and 100-meter breaststroke, while junior Travis Floyd set a meet record in the 100-meter backstroke.

The women won in seven of their first eight events and 13 of 16 events overall.

MU SOCCER: Oklahoma defeated the Missouri women’s soccer team 3-2 Friday night in Norman, Okla.

The Tigers (8-5-0, 0-4-0) rallied with second half goals from Kristin Andrighetto and Bianca Pritchett but couldn’t overcome two early goals from the Sooners (4-8-1, 1-4-1).

COLUMBIA COLLEGE VOLLEY­BALL: The Columbia College volleyball team dominated the opposition at the Lindenwood University Tournament, sweeping all three opponents it faced over the weekend in St. Louis. The No. 6 Cougars ran their record to 24-3 (7-0) defeating Central Methodist 30-10, 30-17, 30-27, Culver-Stockton 30-15, 34-32, 30-18 and William Jewell 30-17, 30-27, 30-26.

The Cougars were led by sophomore setter Luana Branco who had 31 assists against William Jewell and was named to the all-tournament team.

ROCK BRIDGE SOCCER: The Bruins went 1-2 on Friday and Saturday at the Quincy (Ill.) tournament.

The Bruins fell Friday 2-0 to Neuqua Valley, a team from the Chicago area. On Saturday, they beat Horlick (Wisc.), then lost 2-1 to St. Thomas Aquinas from Overland Park, Kan.

Against Horlick, Matt Albrecht had the shutout as goalkeeper and Henry Hauck scored two goals. Aaron Slaney scored the lone goal against St. Aquinas on a second-half header.

NASCAR: As the speeds inched frighteningly close to 200 mph at Talladega Superspeedway, NASCAR officials were adamant that everything was fine.

Then they slept on it.

NASCAR called a 6:30 a.m. crew chief meeting on Saturday to hand out smaller restrictor plates to push the speeds back down before Sunday’s race on the freshly paved Talladega oval. The new plates knocked the speeds from Jeff Gordon’s top mark of 198.689 mph in practice to David Gilliland’s pole-winning mark of 191.712.

“We tried to downplay it, and we didn’t want to make a knee-jerk reaction,” NASCAR competition director Robin Pemberton said in explaining the delay in changing the plates. “We were hoping that the speeds would go the other way.”

When they didn’t after Friday’s second practice session, NASCAR officials decided to err on the side of caution by slowing the cars. Despite the change, NASCAR did not work a practice session into the schedule so teams could adjust their cars with the new plates.

That infuriated five-time Talladega winner Dale Earnhardt Jr., one of many drivers to visit the NASCAR hauler and lobby for some extra track time.

“At least give us 30 minutes to go out there and run a little bit. I need some laps on the track,” said Earnhardt.