Pack claims home finale
Nevada wins 2 of 3, travels to Utah for final week of season
With the 9-7 score favoring Nevada in Saturday night’s fifth game against San Jose State, senior Teal Ericson yelled to her teammates, “This is where we fight.”
The Wolf Pack went 2-1 in its second-to-last week of regular season play, and as the seniors played their last two career home games, fighting was a common theme for the week.
Nevada beat Sacramento State Tuesday night in five games, gave Hawaii a challenge Thursday night, but fell in three games and fought back from a 2-2 tie to beat San Jose State in a thrilling fifth game.
For the Wolf Pack, matching up against Hawaii meant vying for what would have been only the second win against the Warriors in program history. After the loss, the all-time record stands at 27-1, but Nevada made Hawaii work for its victory.
The first two games of the night went as expected as Nevada fell 30-17 and 30-20 respectively.
However, the third game showed a completely different Nevada squad. Rather than falling back within the first five points, Nevada kept forcing lead changes for a majority of the game.
“We came out after the break and were more excited about winning every point,” outside hitter and libero Allison Hernandez said. “If we would have done that all night, I think we could have pulled it out.”
Midway through the match, the Wolf Pack had a three point advantage over the Warriors. It was not until the score reached 25 all, that Hawaii began to pull away. Nevada came back within two points as the score reached 29-27, but ended up falling 30-27.
“Hernandez did a great job,” Hawaii’s head coach, Dave Shoji, said. “We were not ready to defend her. It was fortunate that things went our way in the end.”
Heading into senior night, emotions ran high as Ericson, Karly Sipherd, Dana Henry and Ashley Miller said goodbye to a place that they have called home for the past four years.
Regardless, the Wolf Pack came out strong and coasted to win its first two games 30-24 and 30-23 respectively.
However, half time brought about a little too much relaxation to the team head coach Devin Scruggs said.
Nevada jumped to early leads in both the third and the fourth games, but once it rounded out the first third of each game, the Wolf Pack’s defense fell apart. Blocks were being missed and kills from the Spartans were falling in any and every gaping hole that was present on the court.
“We did not play that well and we never got into our rhythm,” Scruggs said.
But once again, as the team headed into the final game of the night, it was determined to win, especially because of the four seniors that only had one last chance to do it at home.
The Wolf Pack jumped to an immediate lead and only let the score come to a 1-1 tie. Afterwards, San Jose fell back and Nevada kept increasing its lead.
And while the Spartans pulled within two points multiple times throughout the match, Nevada never let the threat get to them.
In the last two points of the game, a Spartan freshman served her first ball out of bounds. Her second ball was in bounds, but a foot fault gave Nevada the game winning point and allowed it to finish out the night, and the home season, with a 15-12 victory.
Miller and Henry were on the court for the final two points, while Sipherd and Ericson stood on the sidelines shoulder to shoulder.
When the whistle was blown for the foot fault, Ericson could not believe what had just happened, but she and Sipherd ran out on the court and embraced with their fellow seniors.
“This has been out home for the last four years, from start to finish,” Miller said. “It’s where we cry, bleed, sweat and everything else. It’s our entire world.”
Miller finished her final home match with 57 setting assists, while Ericson finished 30 kills and three block assists.
Sipherd had 17 kills in the match along with five block assists and Henry rounded out the night with nine digs.
“Each senior has had such a different impact on the program,” Scruggs said. “Whether it was work ethic, intensity, offense, defense, fire or leadership, they all contributed. They will all be greatly missed.”
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 1:16 am and is filed under Sports, Volleyball.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Print this post
Email this post© 2008 The Nevada Sagebrush
November 6th, 2007 at 10:08 am
The Hawaii womens volleyball program are not called the Warriors.All the Hawaii women’s teams are the Wahine meaning women in Hawaiian. The male programs are the Warriors.