Box Score

LAIE, Hawaii - The No. 25 Point Loma volleyball team suffered its first in the Pacific West Conference this season when it fell 25-23, 18-25, 25-21 and 25-19 to No. 5 BYU-Hawaii on the road on Friday, Oct. 18.

Despite the loss the Sea Lions (17-4, 11-1 PacWest) are still tied for first place in the PacWest standings with California Baptist. It also snaps Point Loma's 11 match winning streak, which included five road victories. The win brings BYU-Hawaii (14-1, 9-1 PacWest) to within two matches of the Sea Lions in the win column.

Heather Leavitt led all student-athletes with 19 kills. Delaney McCraney also added 12 kills and Alyssa Dwyer chipped in with 11. Savannah Wedemeyer added 41 assists and Christian Fisher had a match-high 15 digs for the Sea Lions.

Shih Ting Chen, who entered the match leading the PacWest in kills with 4.83 per set, paced the Seasiders with 17 kills on the evening. Erica Willes also was a huge factor in the win for BYUH as she registered 13 kills and a .478 hitting percentage.

The teams are nearly even statistically across the board except in hitting percentage where the Seasiders possessed a .264 to .206 advantage. This edge helped them close out tight sets in the first and the third. PLNU was in the third set, trailing 19-18 but BYU scored six of the final nine points for the win. BYU-Hawaii took that momentum of winning  the third set into the fourth and jumped out to a 9-3 lead before settling on the 25-19 win.

"We competed in the first two sets but did not adjust to their changes in the third and fourth sets," said Point Loma head coach Sarah Gustin. "We allowed ourselves to get frustrated and we can't win that way. BYU-Hawaii did a good job adjusting to our style of play."

The PLNU volleyball team will have a chance to quickly wash the taste of defeat from their mouths tomorrow when it faces Hawaii Hilo (6-9, 1-9 PacWest) at 10:00 p.m. (PST).