New Mexico State 3, Idaho 2
New Mexico State snapped Idaho's six-match WAC winning streak Saturday, beating the Vandals in five sets (26-24, 19-25, 18-25, 25-23, 15-13). With the win, the Aggies, improve to 16-8 overall and 11-3 in the WAC. Idaho falls to 13-13 on the year and 9-4 in WAC play.
New Mexico State finished with 77 kills to Idaho’s 47 and held an 83-51 advantage in digs. The Vandals held a 17-11 margin in blocks and improved their nation-leading blocks per set average to 3.15.
Kayleigh Giddens tallied a career-high 25 kills to go with 12 digs for her sixth double-double of the season. Jennah DeVries dished out a career-high 66 assists to go with 11 digs.
Sarah Conwell extended her streak of consecutive double-doubles to seven as she registered 17 kills and 11 digs while adding five blocks and two service aces. Meredith Rice tallied 18 digs, Debbie Pederson finished with nine blocks and Anna McKinney totaled eight blocks.
Boise State 3, Louisiana Tech 2
Boise State fought to a five-set win over Louisiana Tech Saturday afternoon, sweeping the Lady Techsters in the WAC regular season. Boise State (6-19, 6-7 WAC) rode on the backs of three Broncos who had career-best performances to pull off a 25-19, 20-25, 27-25, 23-25, 15-9 win over Louisiana Tech (14-16, 4-10 WAC).
Elizabeth Griffin was one of three Broncos to set a career-best in the match, tallying 18 kills and four block assists on the night. Her total kill career-best was improved by two on Saturday. Liz Harden set three bests with her first-ever double-double, doubling her career-best in digs to 16 and adding 13 kills. Breann Nesselhuf also added a double-double while also upping her career-best in digs by two to 15.
Alisha Young added 16 kills and a match-high of six block assists and Jeanene Rose racked up a match-high 24 digs.
LA Tech was led by Kassia Pinto with 14 kills, four service aces and 19 digs. Nataliya Panova and KC Clayton also added 13 kills apiece. Panova recorded a double-double by adding 12 digs. Kara Jones led the team in blocks with five.
Notching their sixth win of the season, the Broncos have earned their best conference record since 2006 when they went 6-10. If the Broncos can produce one more regular season conference win, they will hold the best conference record by a Boise State volleyball team ever while in the WAC as well as the best conference record since 1998 when the team went 11-5 in Big West Conference play.
Nevada 3, San Jose State 0
Nevada won its first road match of the season Saturday, sweeping San Jose State in a WAC match by scores of 25-18, 25-22 and 25-21. With the victory, the Pack improve to 9-17 on the season and 5-7 in WAC play while SJSU drops to 1-23 and 1-12 in conference play.
With set one tied at 8-8 the Pack used a 7-2 run to move on top 15-10 and SJSU could only get within three points the rest of the way as Nevada went on to win 25-18. Nevada hit .312 in set one and the Spartans .176.
The Pack scored the first three points of set two and never trailed on the way to the 25-22 victory. SJSU did tie the score on two occasions at 8-8 and 21-21. Nevada put together a 4-1 run down the stretch to break the 21-21 tie. Senior setter Sonnie Sei ended the set with a kill off an assist from freshman Kelly Chang. The Pack's attack percentage slipped to .143 but held SJSU to a negative .029 hitting percentage.
SJSU scored the first two points of the third set but Nevada scored eight of the next nine points to go in front 8-3 and the Wolf Pack never trailed the rest of the way in winning the final set 25-21 to take the match 3-0. Junior Kylie Harrington ended the match with her 14th kill of the night off an assist from Sei. The Pack hit .189 in set three and SJSU .200.
Harrington finished with a match-high 14 kills and junior Lindsay Baldwin added nine. Sei finished with a match-high 29 assists and libero Nicole Link totaled a match-high 13 digs.
Taylor Japhet topped SJSU with 11 kills and setter Caitlin Andrade had 29 assists. Kristal Tsukano led the Spartans with 10 digs.
Nevada hit .212 in the match compared to .117 for SJSU. The Pack totaled seven blocks and the Spartans had six. Baldwin led Nevada with four blocks and Alex Akana had four for SJSU.