AZUSA, Calif. -- The Azusa Pacific women's volleyball team took out the defending Pacific West Conference champion BYU-Hawaii with a three-set victory Saturday afternoon at the Felix Event Center, 29-27, 25-20, 25-18.
The win ended a four-match losing streak for the Cougars against a team that had won six of its last seven contests, pushing the Cougars' record to even both overall (8-8) and in the PacWest (4-4).
It was a clean match for the Cougars, who posted a .277 attack percentage, coming into the match with a clip of .201. Crystal Dedes had the team's best attack percentage at .444 with eight kills and no errors on 18 attacks.
Meanwhile, it was a big game for freshman Natalie Klapp, who was making just her second collegiate start. The Goleta, Calif. native had nine kills in the first two sets, which paced the team.
"Where we struggled in the past two matches was our attack percentage, but a lot of that stems from the digs and it all starts in that moment," Azusa Pacific head coach Chris Keifesaid. "We cleaned up our passing a lot today and our passers did a great job, which means our hitters were getting some really good sets. It was a good all-around team effort and we were really clean in how we played today."
The Seasiders controlled play early in the first set, getting to a 21-16 lead, but the Cougars responded with a 8-2 run that was started by a pair of kills by Dedes and then a pair of kills by Klapp to make the score 21-20. After a service error, the Cougars immediately got a side out with another kill by Dedes.
"We just had to slow things down a little bit," Keife said. "We were thinking too much in the future about how far we had to go. We just had to take it one point at a time and focus on first getting a good pass and from there going into a defensive battle."
Azusa Pacific had the first set point at 24-23, but it wasn't until the fifth set point that the Cougars finally grabbed the opening set.
That momentum carried right into the second set, when Klapp had another pair of kills on consecutive points followed by another kill from Dedes for a 14-8 lead. However, the BYU-Hawaii won six points in a row to erase the lead.
"It's been our mantra this year to just stay in the moment and be focused on what's in front of us," Keife said. "What happened before is something we can't continue to focus on. We needed to focus on what we will do to make the next play, which is the mentality that we are trying to have out there."
It was Klapp and Dedes attacking that came at a huge time for the Cougars again after they trailed 19-18 in the second set. A Klapp kill was sandwiched by three Seasider attack errors to give Azusa Pacific the lead back. Then Dedes had kills on two of the last three points, including on set point to give the Cougars a two-set advantage.
The Cougars put pressure on Sinamoni Tonga's attacks all match, forcing her into 14 errors on 55 attacks with 18 kills. She entered the match in the conference's top 10 for kills, but the Cougar defense forced her to go for the lines, and on four of the last five points of the match, forced her into errors. One of those errors came on one of the longest rallies of the match and another was blocked by Dedes and Mattie Shelford before the final Tonga error came on match point.
Azusa Pacific has now won both of the last two meetings between the two schools, including a five-set win late last season when the Seasiders were ranked No. 4 in the nation.
"In this conference, any team can beat any team," Keife said. "What separates the best teams from the middle of the road teams to the teams at the bottom is not much. When you have to travel and are playing your fourth match on the road, you are definitely at a disadvantage. "
Shelford finished the match with nine kills and just three errors on 25 attacks for the Cougars. Meanwhile, Alyssa Tavera had 23 assists and Jaden Louie dished out 14, helping the Cougars to their best attack percentage in a match since defeating Fresno Pacific. Ashley Swatek also had a team-high 22 digs.
Azusa Pacific will next play a non-conference match at Cal State L.A. on Wednesday before returning to Azusa to host Dominican in PacWest action.
