Montana Box Score | Utah Box Score | Gonzaga Invitational Tournament Central

SPOKANE, Wash.--It wasn't quite the fashion in which they would have liked, but the Gonzaga University volleyball squad won its own Gonzaga Invitational Saturday night after sweeping Montana and taking Utah to five sets. The Bulldogs took the crown by virtue of a set win percentage of .727 throughout the weekend with sweeps over both Wyoming and Montana during the tournament held at the Martin Centre on the Gonzaga campus.

Game One: Gonzaga 3, Montana 0 (25-18, 25-19, 25-21)

Junior McKayla Ferris powered the Zags to a three-set win over Montana, ending the match with 20 kills and hitting .471, a personal best for the outside hitter. Eight of those kills came in the first set, she was a perfect 5-for-5 in the second, and she added seven more in the third and final set.

The two sides traded points to begin the match, but a four-point run from Gonzaga gave the Bulldogs a first-set lead they wouldn't relinquish. They scored four straight on a pair of Montana errors and kills by both Ferris and junior Emmy Allen to take a 10-6 lead. After the Griz pulled within two at 17-15 GU, the Zags responded with seven of the next eight points, essentially ending the frame.

In the second set, Gonzaga pulled away early with six straight points, five on the serve of junior Morgan Douglass. Both Ferris and redshirt senior Savannah Blinn provided kills, and the Zags also picked up an ace from Douglass and a block from Blinn and Kaylie Loewen. That stretch gave Gonzaga a 7-3 lead, but it wasn't until another four-point run late in the frame that the Zags put away Montana for good.

Like Friday's match against Wyoming, the Bulldogs had to come from behind in the third set to complete the sweep. The Griz opened up a four-point lead at 2-6, but the Bulldogs evened the match at 7-7 with a run of their own. From that point, the teams traded tying points until the Zags went ahead permanently with a stretch of six straight points on the serve of freshman Faith Smith. Ferris, Allen, and junior Imani Wimbush all posted kills during that stretch to give the Zags a 22-17 lead, one that they wouldn't give up. Wimbush and Blinn then ended the match with a block, giving the Bulldogs their second sweep of the weekend.

Game Two: Utah 3, Gonzaga 2 (19-25, 25-22, 25-22, 23-25, 15-5)

The Zags pushed Utah to five sets in a tightly contested tournament nightcap, but they couldn't quite pull off a comeback against the Pac-12 team.

Gonzaga took an early advantage with a 25-19 first set victory. The two squads traded points in the beginning of the match, but a kill by Allen and resulting three-point run on her serve gave Gonzaga a 13-9 advantage. The Utes re-tied the match at 15-all, but GU scored the next three points and seven of the next nine to permanently run away. Blinn and senior Lauren Joseph then finished off the set with a kill each.

Utah took the second set draw even at one, and they won an equally-tight third set by the same 25-22 score. In both sets, the Bulldogs held early leads but the Utes drew the frames even around the 15-point mark. Gonzaga kept pace with Utah in both sets and even took a 22-21 lead in set No. 3, but the guests closed out each to take a 2-1 match advantage.

The fourth was the most tightly contested set of the match as both squads traded the first 28 points of the frame. Neither squad held more than a two-point lead until Utah took a 16-14 lead and later extended that to 20-16. A four-point GU run tied the frame at 20 apiece, and with the score tied at 23 all, Gonzaga scored the last two points to force a deciding fifth set. Ferris put the Zags on the brink with a kill, and Wimbush and Allen combined for another block to finish off the set.

Gonzaga's rally in the fourth ran out of steam in the fifth set, however, as the final frame saw just one tie score, and the Utes never trailed. Utah took the set 15-5 and the match three sets to two.

Gonzaga Invitational Standings

Gonzaga Invitational All-Tournament Team

MVP: Morgan Douglass - Gonzaga
Laura Beach - Wyoming
McKayla Ferris - Gonzaga
Eliza Katoa - Utah
Capri Richardson - Montana
Kayla Slofkiss - Wyoming

Bulldog Bites

• Ferris' .471 hit percentage against Montana was the highest of her career and highest by a Bulldog tis season. She entered the match with just six kills in three matches and was hitting .000 before the contest as well (she was hitting .276 after the first match of the day). The Chandler, Ariz., native was just two kills away from equaling her career high of 22 set Aug. 30, 2014 against Portland State.
• Douglass had another solid day, posting a season-high 22 digs against Utah and tallying notching 14 more in the morning against Montana. The libero also provided four assist sin each contest and served up a pair of aces against the Griz. She earned Tournament MVP honors for her efforts all weekend in helping the Zags smoothly transition from defense to offense.
• Lost in Ferris' stellar morning was a top-notch blocking game for Gonzaga. The Bulldogs posted a season-high 14.0 team blocks against the Griz, and four different Zags equaled or set new personal bests on the year. Wimbush led the way with eight blocks, equaling a yearly high, while Loewen added five to match a season best. Joseph also did with two blocks while Ferris set a yearly high with 3 and redshirt junior Paige Folger posted her first block of the year. In the nightcap, Gonzaga added 12.0 team blocks, including six alone in the fourth set.
• Joseph statistically saw her best match of the year Saturday evening against Utah. The setter set season highs with 26 assists and five blocks, one of them solo. Despite running the offense for just three rotations, she's providing 4.86 assists per set, and she's also blocking 0.41 shots per set, well above her career high for a year of 0.25 set last season.

Zag Speak
Gonzaga head coach Dave Gantt
"Our level of play was pretty solid through all three matches [of the Gonzaga Invitational]. It's unfortunate that that fifth set - which we haven't had to play at all this year - creeped into this one and we just weren't effective at all. It happened so fast that it's hard to recover. We just didn't do what we needed to in order to hang in there. Give Utah credit, they were steady, and we had to make some plays and we didn't quite get that done. That's the nature of it when you play good teams."

"McKayla stepped up in a big way to help us out. Also, kudos to Morgan Douglass for having a really nice weekend and again, doing some things that we worked on last week in practice. They showed up really consistently in this match against Utah; she was huge. All in all, it's a good weekend. We can't be disappointed; we're playing at a solid level. We just need to take care of business in earlier sets and not let people off the hook so we can get it done in three or four."

Next Up
Gonzaga (4-2) will next hit the road for the first time this season, playing four matches in three days in the Phoenix area next weekend. They start the weekend with a pair of matches on Friday, Sept. 11 - versus Niagara and at Grand Canyon - and they'll wrap up the GCU Invite with a single match against Southern Utah on Saturday, Sept. 12. They wrap up the trip to Arizona with a contest at Arizona State on Sunday, Sept. 13.