By Tia Babbel
Sweeping the two final Mountain West Conference home matches, the BYU women”s volleyball team swept its two final MWC home matches this weekend, crushing New Mexico 30-24, 30-21, 30-20 and grounding the Air Force Academy 30-23, 30-11, 30-21.
The two victories brought the Cougars” record to 18-6 overall and 8-3 in the MWC. It also extended the Lobos” losing streak to 17 matches and dropped the Falcons to 13-11 and 3-7 in the MWC.
BYU out-hit the Lobos .365 to .115 and hit over .314 in each game, making it a solid all-around match, said head coach Karen Lamb.
Saturday night”s match against the Falcons was a record-breaking success. Four personal records and one team record were broken.
The Cougars started the match off quickly with a kill by Lindsey Metcalf to score the first point. The off-balanced Falcons couldn”t stop the Cougar momentum from there.
“They”re a strong team – the second-best serving team in the conference,” Lamb said. “But, we got our defensive specialists in there to stabilize things.”
Game two was close until the Cougars broke the 7-7 tie with three serving aces by Freshman Lindsy Hartsock.
“We need to make a big run to get back in it and she [Hartsock] provided what we needed,” Lamb said.
The Cougars didn”t let up from there and scored 23 of the next 26 points to end the game. The 19-point triumph in the second game is BYU”s biggest single-game margin of victory this season.
Hartsock tied a career high with five aces in the match.
“I just want to focus on going hard on each play,” Hartsock said.
Metcalf and libero Uila Crabbe also had career highs, Metcalf with four solo blocks and Crabbe with nine digs.
Additionally, sophomore middle blocker Lexi Brown led the team with 11 kills and had a career high of seven blocks.
With both matches combined, BYU hit over .300 in all six games.
“One thing we did well was hit the balls deep so their outsides couldn”t hit as well,” Lamb said.
Shutting down the Falcons” outside hitter Delavane Diaz, the MWC”s top hitter, was key to the game said Lamb. Diaz was limited to only 10 kills.
The Cougars will travel to their single match this week against longtime rival Utah. The second-place Utes lead the Cougars by one match in the MWC standings. The match will be held on Crimson Court Friday at 7 p.m.
