LARAMIE, Wyo. (Nov. 14, 2019) – The Wyoming volleyball team opened its final regular season home week making quick work of Boise State, sweeping the Broncos 28-26, 25-20 and 25-16 to earn its 13th Mountain West victory of the season. The 13 conference wins are tied for the most league wins in program history.
The Cowgirls (18-8, 13-2 MW) got off to a sluggish start, needing to rally in the first set from down by as many as five points at 19-14. The Cowgirls also had to stave off three set points from the Broncos (16-10, 8-7 MW) and scored the final three points to take the opening set.
"I thought after the second timeout in the first set, we talked a little bit more about applying service pressure," said Head Coach Chad Callihan.
"This is a good team but we thought that maybe we could get them out of system a little bit and we needed to, because they have so many offensive weapons. I thought the kids did that in those tight moments. That was probably the biggest difference."
UW controlled the rest of the match for the most part, trailing early in the second, 6-3 but the Cowgirls then ramped up the play, going on a 12-4 run to take a 15-10 lead and control the rest of the set. In the third and final, the Cowgirls scored six consecutive points to open the set after a service error to begin. Wyoming led by as many as 12, 15-3 in the third.
KC McMahon led three Cowgirls in double-digit kills with 13 on the night while Jackie McBride had 11 and Halie McArdle chipped in with 10. McBride hit .474 in the win while Tara Traphagan hit .467 on the night and tallied nine kills.
Mackenzie Coates had a strong all-around match, registering 35 assists, a pair of service aces, four kills, five digs and three blocking assists. Coates, along with Madi Fields and McBride, each had two aces to record all six of the Cowgirls' serving aces. For the match, Wyoming recorded those six aces and just two serving errors while the Broncos had just one ace and committed three errors.
Fields was again stellar in the back row, recording a match-high 22 digs. It marks the second time this season that Fields has notched 22 digs in just a three-set match. Erika Jones added eight digs while McArdle had six and Hailey Zuroske tallied five.
Both teams had 46 digs on the night while the Cowgirls had a 49-45 edge in kills and had three fewer (14) attack errors than BSU (17). On the night, Boise hit .237 while the Cowgirls hit .292 as a team. UW also kept pace with the best blocking team in the league and fourth-best in the nation as the Broncos had just two more blocks (9-7) than UW did.
"They're a physical and athletic team and I think we are too," said Callihan. "We spend a good bit of time on our block and we scheme pretty well sometimes. The kids did a good job of executing that plan. It was good for us."
The Cowgirls now shift their sites immediately as they host Utah State Friday night at 6:30 p.m., tomorrow's match will be Senior Night as seniors Fields, McArdle, Traphagan and Kiahlei Yaste will be playing their final match at home.
-WYO-
