FRESNO, Calif. – Dominican women's volleyball dropped a tightly contested match 25-22, 25-24, 26-24 to Fresno Pacific Saturday at the Special Events Center.
Freshman
Brittania Chan had a match-high 13 kills to go with six digs for the Penguins (3-6, 1-3 PacWest), while senior
Kate Even ended the match with eight kills and eight blocks. Caroline Bodziak led the Sunbirds (2-10, 1-2 PacWest) with 12 kills on a .476 hitting percentage.
Dominican held a 9-4 advantage on blocks, but FPU hit .245 for the match to make up the difference with hardly any other separation between the two teams statistically.
Eleni Loizou had a kill and Even collected her first block in the early part of the first set to power the Penguins to a 5-3 advantage, but two Dominican errors and an ace from Bodziak gave the Sunbirds back the lead at 8-7. The lead continued to change hands and Chan sparked a 4-0 run with a kill to give the Penguins their largest lead of the set at 13-9. FPU's Carley Bock had two kills and an ace during a 5-1 run to quickly tie the match once again. Dominican capitalized on several errors to take a late 22-19 advantage, but Christina Tran led the Sunbirds on a set-ending 6-0 run with two kills and a block.
The second set began in a similar manner as
Cat Thomason found the court for back-to-back kills to lead the Penguins to an early 8-4 advantage. Fresno Pacific fought its way back into the set and Tran tied the set at 11 with a kill.
Brittany Latigue had a kill and a block to help Dominican rebuild a cushion at 17-14, but Madison Pierce sparked a 5-0 run for the Sunbirds with two kills to answer. Chan tied the match at 23 with a kill, but Greta Dobenecker gave FPU set point with a kill and an attack error gave them the 2-0 set lead.
Chan had three kills and
Samantha Brown had two of her four service aces in a large 7-point run for the Penguins in the third set to take a 13-8 lead. Dominican looked like it would stave off the sweep after Even and Chan combined for a block to give the Penguins a 23-16 advantage, but the Sunbirds ended the set on a 10-1 run including five kills from Bodziak to take the match.
Dominican will head next to Oakland, California, Thursday to face Holy Names at 7 p.m. PDT at Tobin Gymnasium. Live stats and video will be available online.
