Box Score BURNABY, British Columbia – Sophomore outside hitter
Sam Harthun (Oregon City, Ore./Art) put down a season-high 26 kills Saturday and hit .457 to lead all players, but Alaska fell 3-0 (29-31, 20-25, 18-25) at Simon Fraser after hard-fought battles in the first and second frames.
Harthun finished the week with 44 kills and hit .356 in two matches, but the Nanooks (3-17, 2-7 Great Northwest Athletic Conference) were swept in both contests. Freshman setter
Katelyn Camp (Newton, Iowa/General Studies) tied a season high with 39 assists in the match. The Nanooks posted their third-most team blocks of the year with seven.
Saturday the Clan (8-6, 3-5 GNAC) fought off six set points from Alaska in the opening set to take a 1-0 match lead and set the tone for the rest of the match. Kelsey Robinson tallied 16 kills and hit .364 to lead Simon Fraser.
Senior outside hitter
Keri Knight (Arvada, Colo./Business Administration) had seven kills and hit .222 to extend her streak of matches with at least seven kills to 11. She has gathered 109 kills and hit .278 during that streak while raising her season hitting percentage 131 points to .197.
The first set saw 16 tie scores and four lead changes. Only twice did either team hold a lead of more than two points – when Simon Fraser led 3-0 and 18-15. The Nanooks went on a 9-4 run after the Clan's last three-point lead in the set to put themselves on the cusp of a 1-0 match advantage with a 24-22 lead, but the Clan answered with back-to-back points to tie it at 24-all.
From there, Simon Fraser continued to fight off set points. The Nanooks broke a tie score and grabbed a one-point advantage four times in a row after the 24-24 score. Then it was the Clan that went ahead 29-28 before the Nanooks tied it again at 29-29 on a Harthun kill, her 14th of the set. But Simon Fraser closed the deal on a kill from Madeline Hait and a service ace by Tamara Nipp to win the set 31-29.
The Clan rolled the momentum of the first set win into the second set, building as much as a 12-point lead at 20-8. But the Nanooks woke up and went on a 10-3 run to make it 23-18 and make it a five-point deficit.
Alaska got two more points to make it 24-20 on back-to-back kills from junior middle blocker
Morgan McGrath (Queen Creek, Ariz./Business Administration), but Simon Fraser would win the second set 25-20 and go up 2-0 in the match.
The third set was similar to the second, with Simon Fraser building a double-digit lead midway through, but this time Alaska could not come all the way back. The Nanooks hit .086 as a team in the third set. The Clan turned an early three-point lead into a 12-point advantage with a 10-1 run.
The Nanooks answered that run to get back within six at 18-12 with six straight points that included a kill and an ace from Knight and three straight kills from Harthun. From there the Clan would trade points back and forth with the Nanooks to eventually hold on for the seven-point set win at 25-18 and clinch the match.
Alaska returns home to the Patty Center Thursday for a two-match home stand to begin the second half of the GNAC schedule. The Nanooks face Central Washington at 7 p.m. Thursday, then take on Northwest Nazarene at 3 p.m. Saturday.
