Seward's Jayhawk Title Hopes Dashed by Hutch
| Final | 1 | 2 | 3 | T | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Hutchinson Community College (16-7,9-2) | 25 | 26 | 25 | 3 |
|
Seward County Community College (17-12,7-3) | 22 | 24 | 18 | 0 |
The Seward County Lady Saints went into Wednesday night's showdown with rival Hutchinson with high aspirations for the rest of the regular season. With Hutchinson's win over Colby and then the Dragon's loss to Cloud County, Seward was back in the race for the Jayhawk West title with five conference matches to go. However after the match Wednesday, the Lady Saints will likely have to shift their 2013 goals as the Blue Dragons came into the Greenhouse and put it on Seward, drilling the gals in green in three sets 25-22, 26-24, 25-18 to all but end their regular season championship chances.
With an electric atmosphere in the Greenhouse, Seward couldn't have gotten off to a much better start. The Lady Saints scored the first four points of the match, helped by a pair of Hutchinson errors and a kill from Morgan Riley and an ace from Carolina Gasparini to take a 4-0 lead. Seward continued to control the pace, holding the lead to 13-10 after another Riley kill, but that is when things turned south for the gals in green. Hutch ran off four straight points to take their first lead of the match at 14-13 and stretched their lead to four at 20-16 as Seward couldn't find a way to right their ship. Seward's hole grew to as many as five late in the set before a valiant late comeback try fell short as Hutch went on to take the set 25-22. The Lady Saints didn't help themselves in the three point first set loss. Seward committed 8 hitting errors and also had 2 service errors and a blocking error to give Hutchinson 11 of their 25 points in the set.
The Lady Saints again came out strong in the second, quickly going ahead 5-2 on a pair of kills from Gasparini and another on the right side from Kristen Anderson. But, after Hutchinson found a way to tie the set up at 6, they continued on a 7-2 run to take a 9-7 lead as again a young Lady Saints team had trouble stopping the bleeding. An overpass midway through the set resulted in another Dragon point to make it 12-9 and Hutchinson continued to push as Seward saw their deficit grow to 17-12. The reigning Jayhawk West Conference Player of the Week, Gasparini was about the only bright spot in the Seward offense in the second and nearly single handedly kept the Lady Saints in the set. She banged home her 5th, 6th, and 7th kills of the set to draw Seward to within two at 21-19 and later on a service error by the Dragons got the Lady Saints to within one at 23-22. After trading points, the Lady Saints scathed off their first set point, tying the score at 24, but a Blue Dragon kill on the next play made it 25-24 and a Seward tip try landed out of bounds on the next point to seal their fate, giving Hutchinson the second set 26-24. It wasn't the Lady Saints offense to blame for the second set loss as Seward hit .256 and had just 3 hitting errors as a squad in the period. The Seward defense however was another story as the Lady Saints managed just 1 block in the set while watching Hutchinson hammer down 19 kills in the 26 point set.
With their backs to the wall, Seward didn't get off to a good start in the third set. After scoring the first point of the set, Seward had a hitting error and back to back reception errors which started a 4-0 run for Hutch to give the Dragons the early 4-1 advantage. Quickly the Lady Saints saw their deficit grow to 9-4 and they were treading water as Hutchinson continued to blow the score open to 14-5. In desperate straits, the Lady Saints slowly began to put up a fight. Back to back kills from Erika Gilbert and Gasparini cut the Hutch lead to 16-12 and later on a block from Anderson and Gilbert made it a three point game 19-16. A timeout seemed to kill the Lady Saints momentum as Hutch came out of the break and got three straight kills to push their lead to 24-17 and the Dragons capitalized on their second match point chance, getting a kill from Hugoton native Nicole Kinser to put the final nail into the Lady Saints chances to give Hutchinson a 25-18 to take the match 3-0.
As it was the first time the Lady Saints took on Hutchinson, Seward struggled to get their offense into a flow Wednesday night. The Lady Saints finished the night hitting just .128 as a team and had just one player with more than 6 kills in the match. Gasparini put up her 7th straight double-double with 13 kills and 12 digs while Nacole Miller led Seward with 26 assists and Kari Anderson paced the squad with 15 digs on the night. The Lady Saints block was nearly non-existent as Seward managed just 3 total blocks on the night with Riley getting one solo and Gilbert getting 2 assisted blocks.
The loss snaps the Lady Saints six match winning streak and sets them back to 17-12 overall on the season and 7-3 in conference action. Hutchinson rebounds from a head-scratching loss to Cloud County Monday night with a win over Seward and moves to 16-7 overall and 9-2 in league play with two games remaining. The win by Hutchinson in the Greenhouse is its first of the sort since the 2009 season and breaks a string of seven straight wins by the home team in the series.
Next up for Seward is a trip to Garden City on Saturday before heading to Colby on Tuesday for another key Jayhawk West tilt against the Lady Trojans.