Saturday, Mar. 6 Match Day!

Updates: Noon matches have started. My apologies as Trinity/CC started at 11:00 central, I guess. Curse that Mountain Time Zone! That match is tied 1-1 in sets.

The noon matches (and Trinity/CC) may be the only ones I’ll be able to see today. FYI.

And those matches are now over.

The only sweep is Austin College’s victory. The ‘Roos were led by Riley Abernathy who had 9 kills and 11 points. Centenary goes 5-sets before they can get their win and had to pull off the reverse sweep to get it. Huge match by Alyssa Davis with 22 kills and 27 digs. Liz Lowe also had a tremendous hitting day. And finally we have CC beating Trinity again this time in 5-sets after Trinity was up 2-1. This will be another rare match where the team with the higher P/S lost. Georgia Mullins had 17 kills with only 2 errors in the match for CC. Each team would have 4 players with double-digit kills.

Back at home. Everything but the late matches are in the books. Box score links have been added. Of course, the NWC matches will not be sweeps. Currently Puget Sound and Whitworth hold 2-1 advantages.

PLU wins set four and forces a 5th set. Will they give Whitworth their first loss?

And we have an answer. PLU gives Whitworth their first loss on the year. Whitman forces a fifth set. Despite a late lead, UPS comes back for the win.

Random Thoughts: I’m writing this two days out so if this is the only thing up then you know I had a horrible Friday.

Update: Well, I didn’t have a great Friday. 🙂

Austin/Dallas will play two matches today. Prior to the season I saw a drop off for Austin College while I thought Dallas could build on their recent successes. The matches today will tell me if I was wrong because right now it appears I was.

Centenary/TLU will also play two matches. Neither team has yet won a match and if either wants a better seed in the conference tournament then today’s the day to make that happen.

Trinity/Colorado College wasn’t a surprise that CC won but that it was in a sweep. Playing a mile high is tough but from what I was able to watch, CC was tougher. Expect Trinity to bounce back but maybe CC is simply making their claim to the #1 seed in the tournament (and maybe the AVCA Top 25).

LETU/UT-Dallas is another fun one today as they play two matches. I think UTD wins these matches but how competitive will LETU make these? This is a chance for LETU to raise their program up even more than they have this year. This is a chance for UTD to stomp down LETU for another year and say it’s not your time.

Whitworth/PLU – Gotta believe in Whitworth.

Whitman/Puget Sound – Close match last night. More of the same tonight.

I felt I should comment on Southwestern/Schreiner from yesterday. Schreiner looked good and all credit to them for splitting their matches yesterday. I didn’t get to see the loss at all…thankfully. In the past, the effort from Southwestern would have easily been enough to win so credit to Schreiner for raising their program up. I look forward to see how they do against the other teams in the SCAC.