DC Advances to HCAC Championship Match
CINCINNATI, Ohio – Defiance earned a spot in the championship match of the 2008 HCAC Conference Tournament with a four-set win against Manchester on Saturday night.
CINCINNATI, Ohio – Defiance earned a spot in the championship match of the 2008 HCAC Conference Tournament with a four-set win against Manchester on Saturday night. The Yellow Jackets will play top-seeded Mount St. Joseph on Sunday for the HCAC Championship and the automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament.
DC moved past the sixth-seeded Spartans, 25-18, 20-25, 25-13, 25-22, to set up the finals match showdown between the top two teams in the league. Defiance showcased a tenacious defense in Saturday's win over Manchester, collecting 87 digs and nine block assists as a team.
Kristen Nicely paced the offense with 16 kills, while Danyel Lipps notched her sixth-straight double-double performance with 12 kills and 21 digs. Lauren Aldridge bolstered the attack with eight kills and no errors in only 15 swings and Julie Brunsman tossed up 37 assists.
The story was the play of the back row for the Yellow Jackets, as a trio of players scooped up over 20 digs each. Lipps was joined in that group by Heather Bradshaw and Sara Porter, who turned in 21 and 25 digs respectively.
The Jackets have now won their first contest in the HCAC Tourney in four-of-six years under Head Coach David Kwan and are 5-5 in the tournament in those six appearances.
Defiance (15-12) and Mount St. Joseph (27-10) will now battle for the HCAC Tournament Championship on Sunday afternoon at 1:00 pm after MSJ swept Bluffton in the other semifinal contest. In earlier action on Saturday, Manchester topped Anderson in five sets and Bluffton took out Hanover in three.
DC fell to the Mount, 22-25, 25-22, 25-21, 25-20, in the Karl H. Weaner Community Center back on October 4 and is 0-8 against the Lions since 2003. The Jackets hit .262 as a team in that loss earlier this year and got 40 kills from Nicely, Lipps and Porter, but struggled defensively and could not overcome 14 receiving errors.
The title clash will be the second for DC during Kwan's tenure, with the first resulting in a 3-0 loss to MSJ in 2005. Aldridge is the only player remaining from that squad and turned in six kills in that defeat.