Lady
Yellowjackets Host Hawaii Pacific to Close First Week of PacWest Play (Sept. 24, 2003)
BILLINGS, MT – There probably won’t be too many
college volleyball teams this season that will have as tough a week as
MSU Billings faces this week. After dropping a pair of matches to
defending National Champion BYU-Hawaii on Monday and Tuesday to open
PacWest Conference play, the Yellowjackets will host 14th-ranked
Hawaii Pacific on Thursday and Friday to finish their first week of
conference action.
The Yellowjackets enter Thursday’s conference match
3-8 overall and 0-1 in the PacWest. Hawaii Pacific survived a scare
Monday night at Western New Mexico and boasts a 7-2 overall record, 1-0 in
the PacWest. The Sea Warriors, who climbed from No. 15 to No. 14 this
week in the American Volleyball Coaches Association poll, suffered their
only two losses early in the season to No. 1 UC-San Diego and No. 4
Barry. HPU led 2-1 in both matches before finally falling in five games.
“With Hawaii Pacific, it looks like they’re bigger
than BYU-Hawaii on paper,” said Yellowjacket head coach Pa’ulasi
Matavao. “After doing some research on them, it looks like they go to
their middles a lot. That’s what gave us problems against BYU-Hawaii.
We’ll have to be able to counter that somehow.”
The Yellowjackets will need to revive their
struggling offense to win their first conference match of the season on
Thursday. It will be just the third match of the season for which Matavao
has had his full roster healthy enough to suit up. Setters Kari Jones (Jr.,
Hermiston, OR) and Natalie Bills (So., Provo, UT) each returned to action against BYU-Hawaii and are still
working out their timing with the Yellowjacket hitters.
“Playing the games themselves helped,” said Matavao,
“but I don’t know if it helps playing BYU-Hawaii and Hawaii Pacific while
we’re still learning and getting the chemistry going. It’s hard to get
that against those teams. While we’re still going through those changes
and learning, we want to be able to compete with these teams. We didn’t
do that against BYU-Hawaii, so that’s what we want to do with HPU.”
Olivia Munro (Jr., Toronto, Ontario) leads MSUB in both kills and digs. She has 131
kills and 124 digs in 36 games this season. Her 3.64 kills-per-game
average ranks her tenth in the PacWest while her 3.44 digs-per-game is
good for fourth-best in the conference. Jessica Bratton (Fr., Casper, WY) is second on the team with a 2.72 kills-per-game
average, while middle blockers Katrina
Dahlgren (Sr., Missoula, MT) and Cortney Metzler (Jr., Roundup, MT) each average over two kills-per-game. Dahlgren and Brittany
Uffelman (Sr., Thermopolis, WY) both average over a block-per-game and
are ranked sixth and third respectively in the PacWest for blocks.
The Sea Warriors are led by pair of sophomore
transfer outside hitters who each average over four kills-per-game.
Nadica Karleusa, a 6-foot-2 Yugoslavian who transferred from Missouri
Baptist, is third in the PacWest with a 4.50 kills-per-game average.
Flavia Brakling, a 6-0 Brazilian who played for National American
University’s undefeated NAIA National Championship team last season, is
fifth in the conference with 4.25 kills-per-game. Rounding out the Sea
Warriors’ front line is 6-2 middle blocker Barbara Martin, a Brazilian who
leads the PacWest with 1.14 blocks-per-game and is second in the league
with a .412 hitting percentage.
Both matches this week start at 7:00 p.m. at
Alterowitz Gymnasium. Thursday’s match will be the PacWest Conference
match while Friday’s will be a non-conference match. |
