Box score, play-by-play
BELLINGHAM -- Match time couldn't come fast enough for Sarah Risser. And when it did, she was ready to play.
So were the rest of her Seattle Pacific volleyball teammates.
Risser, Priscilla Collings and Cortney Weedman all had double-doubles on Saturday night, and the Falcons stayed very much in the race for the Great Northwest Athletic Conference volleyball title by scoring the last four points of the match to seal a four-game victory against Western Washington.
Scores in Sam Carver gym were 25-17, 18-25, 25-17, 26-24.
The win boosted SPU's conference record to 9-3 and its overall mark to 15-9. It also completed a sweep of the season's two matches against the Vikings. Western fell to 15-9, 8-5 GNAC. The Falcons remain in second place, 1½ matches behind first-place Alaska Anchorage (11-2), which won in a three-game sweep at Saint Martin's on Saturday.
“I've been waiting for this all day,” said junior outside hitter Risser (Santa Barbara, Calif.), who contributed a team-leading 17 kills and came up with 12 digs for her 13th double-double of the season. “There were a couple plays tonight where I was really proud of the way we chased down balls.
“We all said to stop talking about it and just do it.”
The Falcons did, and for the fourth time since preseason play, they bounced back from a loss (3-1 on Thursday at Montana State Billings) to get back into the win column right away.
“They've done a great job of that all year,” coach Chris Johnson said. “I just knew they were going to come into this match focused and pumped up. They were ready to go tonight.”
The Falcons play their final two regular-season home matches this coming week, hosting Central Washington on Thursday night at 7, and Saint Martin's next Saturday afternoon, Nov. 7, at 4 p.m.
In addition to Risser's double-double, sophomore outside hitter Collings (Chula Vista, Calif.) had 14 kills and 19 digs. Senior setter Weedman (Scottsdale, Ariz.) had 31 assists and 16 digs. Weedman's double-double was her sixth of the season; Collings' was her fifth. Weedman's assist total gives her 944, leaving her just 56 shy of 1,000 in her two years as a Falcons with four matches left to get there.
SPU was down 24-22 in Game 4, then put the final four points on the board. Collings got a kill to make it 24-23, then Risser hammered a kill that went off a Western Washington player all the way into the balcony for 24-24. Amber Johnson (Mount Vernon, Wash./Mount Vernon HS) had a kill that ricocheted off an attempted Viking block to give SPU match point at 25-24.
Then, with the ball in play, Western was called for a net violation, clinching it for Seattle Pacific.
“It was just a different attitude tonight,” sophomore libero Anna Herold said in comparing Saturday's performance with Thursday's loss in Billings. “Western is just huge for us. We know that team very well. We weren't afraid when they came out a little stronger in Game 4. We know that when we fall behind, it's our fault. But we have the control to change that.”
SOLID START IN OPENER
Down 8-7 in the opening game, the Falcons went on an 8-1 run to take a 15-9 lead and never looked back. It was the first time in the past three matches they've won Game 1 -- a point Johnson emphasized before SPU took the court on Saturday.
“We said that we really need to be ready to go, and we need to get out there and get on them in the first five minutes,” he said “We weren't out to a big lead, but we were intense and played good defense and made good adjustments.”
A 4-0 spurt put the Vikings in front to stay at 6-3 in the second game, as the Falcons were never able to put together any kind of sustained scoring run.
That wasn't a problem in the third game, though. SPU tallied six straight points to take a 7-1 lead, stretched it to 11-3, and didn't let the Vikings get any closer than 18-12 after that.
The Falcons appeared to be well on their way in the fourth game, building a 20-14 lead. Western Washington ran off six straight to climb back in at 20-20. It was 22-all when Marlayna Geary had two straight kills for Western. But that was all the Vikings got, as SPU, after a timeout, put together its match-clinching four-point comeback.
Seattle Pacific's sweep of the Vikings was its first since 2006, the year it won the GNAC title with a 16-0 record.
“That feels very good,” Johnson said. “They're always a good team, and this is always a tough match to come play in front of their crowd. It's just a great feeling to play well up here.”
For the match, the Falcons hit .254, with 62 kills and just 18 errors on 173 attacks. That included .288 in Game 1, then .314 in Game 3 and .286 in Game 4. Western hit .217.
Amber Johnson, the 25th-ranked hitter in Division II, hit .381, with 11 kills.
The Falcons, with just 56 digs in four games at Billings on Thursday, came up with 85 on Saturday, as did Western. Herold, who ranks No. 15 in NCAA Division II in digs per game, had 21 of those. That gives her 520 for the year, leaving her four matches to get the 60 she needs to break her own single-season school record of 579, which she set last year as a freshman.
NCAA Women's Volleyball
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Sam Carver Gym/Bellingham, Wash.
Seattle Pacific 3, Western Washington 1
Game scores -- 25-17, 18-25, 25-17, 26-24.
Service aces -- SPU: Four players with 1. WWU: Three players with 1.
Kills -- SPU: Sarah Risser 17, Priscilla Collings 14, Amber Johnson 11. WWU: Marlayna Geary 17, Emily Jepsen 16.
Blocks -- SPU: Paige Hoffman 4, A. Johnson 3. WWU: Bailey Jones 4, Kathryn Mertens 3.
Assists -- SPU: Cortney Weedman 31, Shelby Swanson 19. WWU: Laurie Yearout 51.
Digs -- SPU: Anna Herold 21, Collings 19, Weedman 16, Risser 12. WWU: Allison Gotz 29, Geary 19.
Hitting -- SPU .254 (62 kills, 18 errors, 173 total attacks), WWU .217 (55 kills, 19 errors, 166 total attacks).
Attendance -- 291.
Records
Seattle Pacific 15-9, 9-3 GNAC.
Western Washington 15-9, 8-5 GNAC.
Next match -- Central Washington at Seattle Pacific, Thursday, Nov. 5, Brougham Pavilion, 7 p.m.
