BOX SCORE

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — Playing without injured starting libero LaShelle Rullan, who is second on the team in digs, the Dominican University of California women's volleyball team struggled to find holes in Dixie State College's defense in a 25-20, 25-13, 25-16 Pacific West Conference loss to the Red Storm Friday night at the Conlan Center.

Dominican (0-13/0-4) was led by senior Cayla Morphew's seven kills, Kelsey Lardner's 21 assists, and Katy Batchelderr's 15 digs while senior Alex Shearer and Brita Jensen combined for 23 kills and 41 digs for Dixie State (10-6/5-3). The Red Storm had 97 digs as a team, 24 more than the Penguins.

“I think Cayla did a good job and I think Kelsey did a good job running the offense, especially feeding the ball to our middle hitters,” said Dominican Head Coach Gayle Stammer. “But Dixie didn't let anything drop.”

In the first set, the Lady Penguins rallied to tie the score at 5, 10 and lastly at 12 on a block by Morphew. Then an Ashlee Sand service ace and a Skyler Moon shot, one of her four kills in the set, kept the Lady Penguins within a point before the Red Storm slowly built their advantage up to six, 23-17, then held off a late Dominican charge.

Jessica Jones and Lardner had six digs apiece in the opening set, but the Penguins' cause was not helped by four service errors.

Dominican took a lead on a Sand kill and tied the second set 3-3 on a Morphew kill, but Dixie State soon scored seven straight points. The Lady Penguins had a difficult time recovering from that deficit, though Jones and Sand recorded kills, Hannah Stocking served an ace, and Batchelder had five digs in the set in an attempt to mount a Dominican comeback.

In the final set, the Red Storm three times jumped to five-point leads and the Lady Penguins twice battled back and narrowed it to three points.  But Dominican was unable to score more than three points in a row in any set in the match and Dixie State never needed to call a timeout.

Jones, Morphew, and Lardner added 14, 13 and 12 digs, respectively, to the Lady Penguins' effort while Moon's .238 hitting percentage was tops on the team.

“We're playing a tough team and when you play hard against a tough team like that it's encouraging,” said Stammer. “In this conference every team is battling for every single point and we have to do the same.”

Dominican has less than 24 hours to recover as the Lady Penguins march right back into PacWest action Saturday when they host Grand Canyon (8-6/2-4) at the Conlan Center at 7:00 p.m. As always, the match will be broadcast online with audio at http://radio.dominican.edu and video at www.dominicanathletics/livevideo.