Lopers put end to ACU's season
11/20/2005 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
ACU falls to Lopers in regional title match
Nebraska-Kearney moves on to Elite Eight with 3-0 sweep
KEARNEY, Neb. -- The top-ranked Lopers of Nebraska-Kearney proved worthy of their ranking Sunday afternoon as they put an end to the best season in the history of ACU volleyball with a 3-0 sweep of the Wildcats in the NCAA Division II Southwest Region Tournament championship match.
The Lopers (36-1) earned their third straight trip to the NCAA Division II Elite Eight with a 30-24, 30-19, 30-22 win over the Wildcats, who finish their season at 31-4. The season-ending loss snapped the Wildcats' school-record 31-match winning streak.
Nebraska-Kearney must now wait until Monday to find out if it will host the national tournament, which will be played Dec. 1-3. The Lopers will play No. 7 Truman State, which won the South Central Region championship Sautrday night. That quarterfinal match will be a rematch of last year's semifinal match, which Truman State swept 3-0 en route to handing the Lopers their only loss of the season.
ACU, which hit .322 and committed just 26 hitting errors in the first two matches of the tournament, hit a season-low .094 and had 27 attack errors in the loss to the Lopers. ACU, in fact, gave the Lopers 37 of their 90 points (41 percent) either by attack errors (27), service errors (9) or ball-handling errors (1).
"We just weren't consistent enough today to win," ACU head coach Brek Horn said. "We had too many errors, too many serivce errors, and got aced too much (nine times) to put any pressure on them. Some of the things we worked on worked when we executed them. But we just didn't execute consistently enough to win. But Kearney has a good team, and they'll do well at the national tournament."
The Wildcats could never get untracked offensively, and in fact, only led twice: 3-2 early in both the first and third games. ACU kept it close in the first game, but each time it would creep to within three points the Lopers would pull away.
ACU pulled to within 26-23 late in the first game on a kill by Abbie Lowry, but Erin Gudmundson, Erin Brosz and Kelli Bunger had back-to-back-to-back kills to push the lead to 29-23 and give the Lopers game point. Lowry kept it alive with another kill, but Brosz ended the first game with a kill.
The Wildcats were never really in the second game as the Lopers opened up a quick 9-5 lead and then extended it to 19-9 on a block by Gudmundson. The Lopers dominated the second game with their block, and that was a theme throughout the match as they finished with 10 total team blocks to just one for the Wildcats.
"We haven't played a team this season with the kind of height that Kearney has," Horn said of a team that has seven six-footers on its roster. "They put up a good block, and we couldn't do much with it. Our blocking struggled, and therefore our defense struggled."
ACU played better in the third game, rallying an early 13-5 deficit to get back to within 25-21 on a kill by Lindsey Martin. Lauren Leone had a kill and Amanda Slate had back-to-back kills preceding the Martin kill to get ACU to within four points.
But the Wildcats would get just one more point in the match -- on a kill by Slate to make it 28-21 -- and the Lopers capped the win with a kill by Gudmundson.
"I told our girls that we have nothing to hang our heads about," Horn said. "We would have liked to have given Kearney a better match, but it just didn't happen for us today. But it's a step forward for our program. Kearney has national tournament experience, and it showed today."
Sunday's match was the final appearance as Wildcats for the fabulous senior foursome of Michelle Bernhardt, Martin, Slate and Ashlee Motola. Those four led ACU to a 102-37 record, two Lone Star Conference championships, two trips to the regional tournament, one trip to the regional tournament championship match, and the program's first national ranking.
They are also believed to be the first quartet in NCAA Division II volleyball history to play their entire careers together and finish with a 5,000-assist setter (Martin), a 2,000-kill hitter (Bernhardt), a 1,500-kill hitter (Slate) and a 1,000-kill hitter (Motola).
"It's great to see where we came from when we got to ACU to where we are right now," said Bernhardt, who finishes her career with 2,128 career kills. "We've got a lot of things to be proud of, and hopefully we're leaving the program better off than when we got here."
Horn said there's no doubt about that.
"Those four girls are just amazing ... both on and off the court," she said. "They've given us exceptional leadership for the last four years, and they've worked so hard for everything they've accomplished. We'll be back, and a big part of the reason why is because those four girls have set the bar very high for this program."
ACU NOTES
* Michelle Bernhardt finishes her career with 2,128 kills, which is 20th on the NCAA Division II career list, second on the all-time Lone Star Conference list and first in ACU history. Kearney's all-America middle blocker, Gudmundson, heads to the regional tournament with 2,131 career kills, which is 19th on the all-time list. Bernhardt finishes seventh on the Division II career list for total attacks with 5,451. Bernhardt also finished fourth on ACU's all-time digs list with 1,501.
* Lindsey Martin finishes her career with 5,793 assists, which is good for 18th on the all-time NCAA Division II list and second in LSC history. She passed former Texas Woman's setter Sarah Steinmetz (5,790 career assists) in both categories on Sunday. Martin is far and away the all-time assist leader in ACU history with almost 1,500 more assists than previous record-holder Brittney Binder (ACU head coach Brek Horn's younger sister), who had 4,296 assists from 1996-99.
* Amanda Slate finishes her career with 1,544 kills, which is third in ACU history behind Bernhardt and Linda Evans (1,560 from 1989-92). She also finished second on the school's all-time blocks list with 500 total blocks, second to Evans, the LSC record-holder with 676 total blocks.
* Ashlee Motola finished her career with her finest season, recording a career-best 324 kills to finish with 1,014 career kills. She also hit .310 on the season to finish in the top 10 in the LSC.
* Bernhardt, Martin, Slate and sophomore libero Liz Snoddy were all named to the NCAA Division II Southwest Region all-Tournament team.
