Oct. 20, 2005
Stockton, Calif. - The Pacific women's volleyball team improved its Big West Conference record to 4-3 on the season with an impressive 3-0 win over UC Riverside on Thursday, October 20. Game scores for the match were: 30-25, 30-26, 30-22. The win moved the Tigers overall record to 10-9, while the Highlanders dropped to 13-7 overall and 2-6 in conference play.
UC Riverside got off to a hot start, taking an 11-6 lead early on in game one and having a lead at 19-16. Pacific rallied behind kills by sophomore Kara Uhl (Cypress, Calif.), senior Sidney Bennett (Louisville, Kent.), and two from senior Ashley Groothuis (Aurora, Neb.) to take the lead at 22-21. From there, the Highlanders amassed four attack errors in a ten point span, as the Tigers took the game 30-25.
Game two followed a similar pattern as UC Riverside built an early 12-7. Later in the game with the Tigers down 17-15, Groothuis took the game over with a kill, then sandwiched service aces around a bad set from UC Riverside to give the Tigers a 19-17 lead. The Highlanders pulled even at 25-25, but a Groothuis kill and a UC Riverside error put Pacific up 27-25. The Tigers went on to take game two, 30-26.
Trailing 20-18 in the third game, the Tigers rallied for a third consecutive game as Pacific scored the next six points to take a 24-20 lead. The Tigers forced UC Riverside into three attack errors and a service error, then got kills from Groothuis and Uhl to cap the run. After the Highlanders broke the Pacific streak on a kill by UC Riverside's Jaime DeKiewiet, the Tigers pushed the lead to 28-21 with four more points. Pacific went on to take the game and the match, 30-22.
Groothuis led the Tigers with 18 kills in the match, while Bennett finished with 11 kills and just one error on 20 swings for a .500 percentage. Sidney also reached a milestone during the match, collecting her 600 kill as a Tiger. She finished the match with 604 career kills. UC Riverside was led by Valerie Bueno, who had 13 kills.
The Tigers will be back in action on Saturday, Oct. 22 as Pacific hosts Cal State Fullerton at 7 p.m. in the Alex G. Spanos Center.