Creighton was calm and collective as they disposed of South Dakota (Spomer / WBR)
In last year’s NCAA Tournament, Kirsten Bernthal Booth’s volleyball team looked to be playing with a lot of nervous energy after earning the program’s first opportunity to host postseason matches. On Friday night at D.J. Sokol Arena, in front of 2,552 fans, they turned that energy into swagger on the court and blew through South Dakota in three sets to advance to the second round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament.
The Bluejays, seeded ninth overall for the second year in a row, dominated the Coyotes in the first two sets, winning both by identical scores of 25-14 to take a 2-0 lead into the locker room, then grinded out a 25-22 win in set three to clinch it and move on to face 22nd-ranked Washington, who fought off a feisty Saint Mary’s club in four sets earlier in the evening.
“I thought we played pretty well tonight,” Bernthal Booth said. “I thought we were clean. I thought our offense looked good, and I thought we moved the ball around well. It wasn’t perfect, but it’s a game of errors so it was good to get the first win. I think the first match is a very stressful situation sometimes and I thought we played very calm … hopefully that will give us some momentum to go play a very good Washington team tomorrow night.”
South Dakota opened the match with a kill by freshman middle blocker Claire Gerdes. That was their final lead … of the match. Creighton reeled nine of the next 11 points behind six combined kills from the longtime friends out of Ankeny, Iowa in senior outside hitter Jaali Winters and junior middle blocker Megan Ballenger to force an early timeout by the Coyotes.
USD fought back after that initial run to close with one at 10-9, but freshman right side hitter Kari Zumach responded with the team’s first two blocks of the match, and it was the Taryn Kloth show after that. The senior outside hitter from Sioux Falls, South Dakota dropped in two kills and a pair of aces to help the Jays extend the lead to 18-10. Ballenger added two more kills late to lead all players with six in game one and give Creighton a 1-0 lead in the match.
The rest of the match might as well have been a contest to see how many kills Kloth could get. From the end of the first set to early in the third, the All-American pin hitter converted 10 consecutive swings into kills. After missing on her first three attacks of the match, she finished the first set with two kills on five swings, went a perfect 7-for-7 in the second, and ended up terminating on seven of her 11 attacks in the third.
“You have to find a different spot,” Kloth said of her plan of attack on Friday night. “They were covering the floor really well, they got a lot of digs, but I think we started to really move it around a lot more, hit different zones, and mix it up with tips and rolls, and I think that’s what led to success.”
Kloth finished the match with a blistering .696 hitting percentage on 23 swings and ended up leading all players with 16 kills. It was her first match without an error this season, but the third time she’s finished with an attack percentage of .500 or better — all three have come during Creighton’s current seven-match home stand.
She had help from the Ankeny Assassins as well. Winters finished with 12 kills and seven digs, while Ballenger added nine kills and three blocks. For the match, Creighton hit .375 as a team and out-blocked South Dakota 10-1 to held their visitors from the north to a .133 hitting percentage on 98 swings.
“I thought we hit really efficiently,” Bernthal Booth said. “I was just looking at the numbers and I didn’t realize that Taryn didn’t have an error — that’s pretty impressive. I actually thought across the board that everyone hit pretty well. That’s really good to see. Hopefully everyone can go into tomorrow night feeling confident.”
The victory gives Creighton 29 wins in a season for the third time in program history. They did it for the first time in 2012 when their current streak of seven consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances began, then again in 2016 when they advanced to the Elite Eight for the first time. However, Kloth knows that getting win No. 30 and making more history — as well as going error-free for a second straight match — will be a tougher task against the nationally-ranked Huskies on Saturday night.
“You can obviously tell physically that Washington is a really big team,” she said. “We’re going to have to figure out ways to hit high, tool off hands, and just figure out different ways to score. Washington is a great team. We’re going to have to come out fighting.”
That Big East/Pac-12 battle is set for a 7:00 p.m. first serve at D.J. Sokol Arena.