Sept. 17, 2010

Box Score

SPOKANE, Wash. - Despite playing in front of its home crowd for the first time this season, the Gonzaga University women's volleyball team was swept by the University of Wyoming in the second match on the first day of the Zags Volleyball Classic. The Bulldogs, who fell to the Cowgirls 23-25, 20-25, 21-25 Friday evening at the Martin Centre, dropped their ninth-straight match and are now 2-11 on the season. Wyoming improved to 12-1 with the victory.

"It was nice crowd tonight and we are very appreciative of their support," said head coach Dave Gantt after nearly 600 fans came out and supported the Bulldogs. "I hope they stick with us as we try and iron out some of these challenges."

Gonzaga struggled offensively all night as it finished the match with 35 kills and 27 attack errors on 106 total attempts for a subpar .075 hitting percentage. Wyoming itself didn't have the best offensive night either, tallying one more kill than the Zags with 36, but only had 19 errors on 109 attempts for a tad better .156 attacking clip.

"The hitting errors are a direct result of not trusting yourself," explained Gantt. "I think that if you took one attack from each hitter that made an error, we hit well enough to win two of those sets."

It seemed if Gonzaga could have taken the first set, it would have been a completely different match. Like the Bulldogs have done some many times this season though, it went from being moments away from victory to defeat in a blink of an eye.

"This is deja vu all over again," stated Gantt. "In set number one, we were up 23-22 and Wyoming called a timeout and on the heels of that timeout, they get a kill and we follow with a hitting error. I call timeout at 23-24 and then we disappeared and gave up a kill for set point."

The Bulldogs didn't recover from its near first set victory and stumbled the final two sets.

"We need to continue to challenge ourselves to make plays at key times," said Gantt. "With all due respect to Laura [Day], something isn't quite right when one of your defensive specialists is your leader with five kills and .833 attack percentage. That should issue a challenge for all of the outside hitters."

Day was one of four Zags to finish with five kills. Also with five were senior middle blocker Schylur Edelman, senior middle hitter Caitlin Cozad and sophomore outside hitter Terran Poindexter. The leader for Gonzaga was junior Kaprina Goodwin with 10.

Wyoming was led by Lauren Whitney with 11 kills, while Dani Bedore added nine kills.

Gonzaga did out-dig Wyoming 49-35 with senior libero Allyson Powell collecting 17. Day added nine.

The Cowgirls won the blocking battle though, with a huge 13-5 advantage. Bedore had five block assists for Wyoming and JennaRae Jester led the way with seven block assists.

The Bulldogs return to action Saturday with matches against Seattle University at Noon and the University of Idaho at 7 p.m.

Notes: In the first match of the Zags Volleyball Classic, Seattle defeated Idaho 3-1.