BOX SCORE

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — The sad news is senior Cayla Morphew played the final match of her Dominican University of California volleyball career on Friday night at the Conlan Center in a highly-competitive 25-14, 23-25, 25-12, 25-18 loss to California Baptist University.

The good news is her Lady Penguins' teammates sent her off by rallying from a five-point deficit to win one set from the Lancers (18-9/10-5) and provide optimism for the future to improve on the NCAA Division II program Morphew entered four years ago as an NAIA program.

“It's all building blocks,” said Dominican Head Coach Gayle Stammer. “Everybody's gotten better… It'll be very exciting to move forward.”

The Lady Penguins (1-24/1-15) played one of their best sets of the season in the second set. After calling timeout trailing 9-4, Dominican scored six consecutive points led by back-to-back kills by Jessica Jones and back-to-back aces by Ashlee Sand.

Though Hannah Stocking came off the bench to provide some spectacular play for the Lady Penguins, the Lancers came back and built a 22-18 lead. But Dominican rallied again, scoring seven of the last eight points in the set to bring the home crowd to its feet.  Jones finished off the set with a ferocious kill, her fifth of the second set.

“We played very well this evening,” said Stammer. “We put the pressure on them.”

The Lady Penguins also exhibited great pride and determination in the final set. Dominican was trailing 15-0 when it battled back to make a game of it, outscoring the Lancers 18-10 at the end,  a feel-good moment for the Lady Penguins to finish the season.

“They don't give up. They work hard for every single point regardless of the score,” said Stammer. “They're learning how to compete.”

Jones topped the Lady Penguins with 11 kills in addition to 10 digs against Cal Baptist followed by teammate Sand with eight kills and freshman Samantha Rains with seven. Sarah Bain had 31 assists and LaShelle Rullan and Katy Batchelder had 11 digs apiece.

Morphew, called “our senior mom” by Sand, her teammate and longtime friend from Rohnert Park in a pre-game ceremony, started the match for Dominican along with three juniors, a sophomore and a freshman.

For the season, Jones, a sophomore, led Dominican in kills, digs and service aces. In addition to her, the Lady Penguins next year will return Seluia "Ria" Falealili, the PacWest Freshman of the Year last year in 2010, and junior Skyler Moon, who topped the team this season in hitting percentage.

Moon and Rains were the top two blockers for Dominican this season. Bain and Kelsey Lardner were the top two setters.