Volleyball loses GNAC opener in straight sets

September 14, 2012

Jamie Foland
jmfoland@alaska.edu

Sam Harthun hit .227 after producing a team-high nine kills.

Northwest Nazarene hit a powerful .361 and used big runs to down Alaska 3-0 in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference volleyball opener on Thursday night at the Patty Center.

The Crusaders improved to 7-3 overall and 1-0 in the GNAC after winning the match by scores of 25-16, 25-15 and 25-20 while the Nanooks dropped its fifth straight to fall to 2-5 on the year and 0-1 in league play.

"I thought it was going to be a closer contest," head coach Phil Shoemaker said. "We knew Northwest was a talented team, well-skilled, good athletes and they're always well coached, so that was certainly not a surprise. I felt like we would be a little more prepared than we were."

NNU hit .361 (37-7-83) on the night while only making three errors and did a great job defensively, limiting Alaska to a .090 (31-22-100) hitting percentage, forcing 22 blunders. Both teams also struggled in the service game, with each making nine errors. NNU did outscore the hosts 9-3 on aces, however. The Nanooks won the digs battle 37-35, but the visitors dominated on the block, with 7.5 swats, to Alaska's one.

"They for the most part owned the net tonight and we did not handle really any part of our game well enough to win and that's disappointed," Shoemaker said.

Elayna Rice tied for a match-high nine kills and made just one error to hit .444 (9-1-18). She also contributed eight digs, three blocks and two aces. Michelle Terpstra led the offense with a .727 attack percentage after tallying eight kills without an error while Becky Flores and Kaitlyn Tuholski had seven and six terminations, respectively.

For the Nanooks, freshman outside hitter Sam Harthun tied Rice with nine kills and hit .227 (9-4-22) to go with her seven digs and an assisted block. Junior outside hitter Keri Knight provided help off the bench with eight kills and a .312 (8-3-16) clip in only two sets.

The first set was tight for some time, but with NNU leading 18-16, it reeled off seven straight points by way of three kills, two Alaska attack errors and a pair of Rice aces to win set one 25-16.

The Crusaders and Nanooks kept set two tight early, but with Nazarene leading 8-7, 10 of 12 points went to the visitors to give it an 18-9 advantage and Alaska burned both timeouts during the run. The 'Nooks got no closer than seven on two occasions and NNU took the second 25-15.

Alaska came out with a little fire power in the third and led by as many as three four different times with the last coming at 12-9. NNU went on a 4-0 run to regain the lead at 13-12 and after UAF tied it a point later, the Crusaders surged to a five-point lead at 20-15 with a 7-2 run. Alaska came to within a point at 21-20 after two Knight kills and three NNU errors, but Northwest Nazarene came away with the match after producing three straight kills and blocking Knight on the decisive match point.

The Nanooks return to the court Saturday at 7 p.m. against Central Washington. The Wildcats (5-4, 0-1 GNAC) dropped a five-set heartbreaker (19-25, 21-25, 28-26, 25-17, 10-15) earlier Thursday at Alaska Anchorage (6-3, 1-0 GNAC).