Eagles lose final yet again
When Sacramento State coach Debby Colberg walked into Reese Court on Saturday night, she felt a certain sense of uneasiness.
It was a feeling, she explained, that sprouted from her Hornets having knocked off Eastern Washington on its home court in the finals of the Big Sky Tournament each of the last two years. And now she was asking them to do it a third time.
“I felt like we were really lucky to win it last year,” Colberg said. “Now this is the third time we come back here, and I’m thinking our luck has got to be running out.”
As it turned out, Colberg’s intuition was as misguided as Eastern’s passing – which proved to be the Eagles’ downfall this time around as Sac rolled to a 3-1 victory and a third-consecutive conference championship in front of a crowd of 1,544.
“Passing, plain and simple,” Eastern coach Wade Benson said when asked what he thought was the key to the match. “If you don’t pass, you can’t win the game. And we didn’t pass at all.”
As a result, the second-seeded Hornets (25-7) breezed to a 30-21, 22-30, 30-18, 30-21 victory and nailed down the Big Sky’s automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament, which starts Dec. 2.
And by doing so, they left the regular-season champion Eagles (20-8) – who still have regular-season games left at Brigham Young and Utah next weekend – hoping for a long shot at-large berth once again.
“They did a real nice job,” Benson said of the Hornets, who got a match-high 18 kills and 10 digs from tournament MVP Sandra Bandimere, a feisty 5-foot-7 outside hitter.
“They had an ‘A’ game for sure going on tonight. But we allowed them to keep their ‘A’ game by our lack of ability to pass the ball.”
The championship match played out much differently than the regular-season Reese Court meeting between the two teams. EWU won that one 3-1 and dominated. And neither Colberg nor Bandimere could explain why.
“I wish I did know, because we wouldn’t do it during the regular season,” Colbert laughed. “But there is something about coming back to the same court that makes it easier the second time around. You’re coming back the second day, you’re practicing twice on it and you’re watching other matches on it, so your comfort level is different.”
Bandimere, a senior and four-year letterwinner, said Reese Court has a different feel come tournament time.
“I don’t know why,” she admitted. “Our mindset is different for some reason. We usually end up coming out with a loss during the season, but when the championship comes around, we definitely step up to the challenge.”
It helped this time around that the Hornets made some defensive changes in preparation for the Eagles.
Unlike their regular-season meeting, they opted to block Eastern’s Keva Sonderen crosscourt, while taking the line away from Megan Kitterman and Brittney Page. Sonderen, the Big Sky’s regular-season MVP, still managed to hit .308 for the match, registering 12 kills that tied Lizzy Mellor for the team high. But Kitterman and Page combined for only eight kills.
And the Hornets seemed to confuse the Eagles by serving short most of the night – right into what Colberg calls “area two.”
“Which is where they like to run behind,” she said. “We were hoping just to clog things up a little bit and ruin their timing, and I think that really worked for us.”
Joining Bandimere, Sonderen, and Kitterman on the all-tournament team were the Hornets’ Atlee Hubbard and Emily Wilson, who combined for 29 kills in the title match, Portland State’s Melissa Osterloh and Montana State’s Kim Stonehouse.
Sac State will find out its first-round NCAA opponent and Eastern will learn its at-large fate next Sunday when the tournament pairings are announced at 3:45 p.m. on ESPN News.