The goal of winning the Big Sky Championship will have to wait another year for the second-seeded Idaho volleyball team as the third-seeded Idaho State Bengals won 3-1 (23-25, 16-25, 26-24, 19-25) Friday at the Rolle Activity Center in Flagstaff, Arizona.
The Bengals were swept by top-seeded and tournament-host Northern Arizona in the conference title match Saturday.
Idaho coach Debbie Buchanan said Idaho struggled to play clean volleyball with the exception of the third set.
“Our biggest thing tonight was we were just making too many errors,” Buchanan said. “In game three we only had four errors and that is why we won it.”
The Vandals committed four more total errors (38) than the Bengals.
Idaho committed eight service errors.
“Our serve-receive at times broke down,” Buchanan said. “We knew it was going to be a side-out battle. I was proud of everything we did this year. Idaho State just played a cleaner game tonight.”
Redshirt freshman outside hitter Kaela Straw led the Vandals with 14 kills and a .478 hitting percentage.
Redshirt freshman outside hitter Sarah Sharp earned the set-winning kill in the third set for the Vandals.
For the third straight game, senior outside hitter Katelyn Peterson earned a double-double. Peterson had 13 kills and 12 digs Friday. It was her 21st double-double and she ended her Vandal volleyball career with 1,009 kills.
Senior defensive specialist Jenna Ellis led the Vandals with 23 digs and senior setter Meredith Coba ended her career with a 27-assist performance.
Idaho (14-16 overall, 10-6 Big Sky Conference) won the Big Sky North division in the regular season after winning the tiebreaker with Northern Colorado. Even though Idaho and Northern Colorado had identical Big Sky records, the Vandals won the tiebreaker with a +1.25 scoring differential.
Buchanan said Idaho came a long way this season and will look to become a stronger team in 2016.
“We made a ton of progress from the start of the season,” Buchanan said. “This conference is more of a defensive conference. As we keep working and become more of a physical team we will catch up.”
Luis Torres can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @TheLTFiles