Oct. 1, 2006
Box Score
By Staff Report
Published October 1, 2006
Posted in Sports
Alaska came out firing and won the first game against Western Washington on Saturday night, but the Nanooks couldn't maintain the firepower and dropped a 3-1 Great Northwest Athletic Conference volleyball decision to the Vikings in Bellingham, Wash.
The Nanooks captured the first game of the match against the highly-touted Vikings 30-26, but Western turned up the defensive pressure and won the next three games 30-20, 30-25 and 30-19. WWU improved to 10-5 overall and 6-1 in the GNAC.
"Western is the No. 1 defensive team in the league and they showed it tonight," Alaska coach Phil Shoemaker said via telephone following the match. "The first game was clearly the best game we've played all year.
"Western is just so consistent on defense and that really showed as the match wore on," Shoemaker added. "We just couldn't quite keep up with them."
The Nanooks got outstanding performances from middle hitters Megan Thigpen and Korlyn Bolster.
Thigpen had a match-high 18 kills, a .222 hitting percentage, a team-high 21 digs to go along with three aces and a block. Bolster registered 11 kills.
"Meagan played a great match," Shoemaker said. "It was a good match for Korlyn as well." Setter Alexa Sherman had 48 assists on the night and came away with four kills and a hitting percentage of .400. Jenna Jones also had three aces for the Nanooks, who had 10 aces and only five service errors on the night.
"It was a pretty good performance all the way around, but not quite good enough," Shoemaker said.
The loss dropped the Nanooks to 3-11 on the season and 2-5 in conference play.
"Every time we go out on the court we're seeing something better than the time before," Shoemaker said. "They're all hungry and don't want to win just one game in a match. We want to be in position to win consistently again, it's just taking longer than we would like." Tiana Roma and Angie Alvord had 16 kills apiece to lead the Vikings, who had four players with 10 or more kills. Courtney Schneider had 33 digs and the Vikings had 14 team blocks compared to just two for the Nanooks.
Alaska returns home this week to host Saint Martin's and Western Oregon on Thursday and Saturday, respectively.
"We're definitely looking forward to that," Shoemaker said. "We've got a good young volleyball team that is getting better each week."
