Nanooks spoil Crusaders' big night
Courtesy NNU Sports Information Department
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mstetson@idahopress.com
Friday, September 28th, 2007
NAMPA — This night turned out to be less than grand for the Crusaders.
Hoping for 1,000 fans, the Northwest Nazarene volleyball team missed that mark, but it was a different number that ended up bothering Crusader coach Jared Sliger.
NNU played a thriller in front of a boisterous 724 supporters, but 37 hitting errors proved costly in a 26-30, 30-27, 31-33, 30-24, 15-12 Great Northwest Athletic Conference loss to Alaska-Fairbanks.
“We had 37 hitting errors, which is about 20 too many,” he said. “All of the kids, our major contributors, it seems like they had hitting errors at the wrong time. ... It seems like whenever we started to get in a rhythm we terminated rallies on our own, without them having to do anything, and that makes it really hard to succeed.”
The Crusaders (3-3 GNAC, 9-5 overall) terminated Game 1 effectively, snapping a 25-all score with a Lindsay Forseth kill, a pair of UAF hitting errors and an Allison James (51 assists) ace for a 29-25 lead en route to the win.
And a spark, as NNU jumped up 10-3 in the second after James set a second-hit over for a kill.
But then the errors started to add up with the Nanooks (8-6, 2-3) tying it 23-23 on a Loni Evenson (14 kills) hitting error, taking a 27-26 edge on a Forseth (12 kills, 18 digs) miscue, and evening the match on another Forseth misfire.
Part of the Crusaders’ problem came from the Nanook defense, which recorded 76 digs.
“The defense is huge,” said UAF coach Phil Shoemaker. “We worked so hard on it because it hasn’t been a great strength for us.”
“They made us play longer rallies,” said Sliger, “and yeah, you start to press, then you try to be too precise instead of just hitting it. I kept begging them in timeouts, ‘Just put some wood to it, hit it and good things will happen.’”
Like late in the third game, when NNU battled back from three game points as a great defensive save by Amanda Boschma led to a UAF hitting error, tying it 29-29, an Evenson tip tied it 30-30, and a Cammy Dranginis (14 kills, 2 blocks) block made it 31-31.
NNU then won it on a setting error by UAF’s Jessica King and a block by James.
“That’s great,” Sliger said, adding, “I was kinda thinking that might happen in Game 5. They have a lot of fight, they just self-destructed too many times.”
After dropping Game 4 — recording nine errors and nine kills — the decisive fifth game looked to be over after an Erica Gage kill made it 14-8.
But NNU battled back with kills by Forseth and Chelsea Pelton (10 kills) and a pair of UAF hitting errors.
Leading 14-12, Shoemaker took a timeout, settled his team down, then saw leading hitter Megan Thigpen finish off the win.
“We knew what we wanted to do, we knew who we wanted to go to and we just needed to be aggressive,” the Nanook coach said.
