LA MIRADA, Calif. --- There's been a lot of great matches in the history of Biola Volleyball, and the performance this 2018 team put out on Friday night will have to rank up there as one of the best all time. The Eagles dismantled a really good Point Loma team to the tune of a 3-0 (25-19; 25-20; 25-13) victory to bounce back in a big way after the sting of Tuesday night.
"That was by far the best match of the season," said senior opposite hitter
Karly Dantuma. "It was super cool to see everyone on and working together. It was a good time on the bench and on the court. One we can really feel proud about."
In the performance, the Eagles had two players (Sierra Bauder, Karly Dantuma) record hitting percentages higher than the previous program single-match record. Bauder ended the evening with 13 kills on 15 swings with no errors (.867), while Dantuma had 12 in 15 swings with no errors (.800). The previous program record was when Alyssa Mason hit .800 in a win over Life Pacific in October 2015.
Bauder converted on each of her first nine attack attempts and was in position to break the PacWest Conference record for single-match individual hitting percentage, but she ended up one kill shy. The record stands at .923 (12 of 13).
"It was a good night," said Bauder. "It felt great. Brinley and Vanessa were setting amazing and the passing was incredible. Everything was there."
As a team, Biola would hit .434, which is by far their best mark of the season and is the fifth-best number ever by a Biola team. The Eagles made just 17 total errors all night long (10 attacks, two serves, two doubles, two receiving and a blocking error). It's the third time this season the team has limited itself to that few errors (wins vs. Sonoma State & Chaminade).
It was a dramatic turnaround after an uncharacteristically underwhelming performance at Azusa Pacific on Tuesday. Most importantly, it keeps this Eagles' team right in the hunt for a conference title at just a half-game behind Azusa Pacific.
"I feel bad for Point Loma. They were just on the end of a phenomenal game by our girls," said Seltzer. "I am so proud of them. They played very well. They were so good defensively all the way around. And offensively, holy smokes! Really, that's because we passed so well."
Biola ended up with 47 digs to the Sea Lions' 31 and almost 100 percent of those digs were perfect passes into the waiting hands of Brinley Beresford and Vanessa Garcia. Christina DenBoer led the effort with 19 digs in her second-straight double-double (19 digs, 12 kills). Sami Hover had 10 digs and Sabrina Winslow was adding to the effort with six of her own.
The Eagles trailed by one point at three different spots in the second set and once by one point in the third set, but led the entire rest of the match. BU was down 5-4 in the third and then rattled off nine points out of the next 10 to open up a lead and ultimately cruise to the match sweep.
"If we pass as well as we did tonight, we have the kind of weapons to be really dangerous," said Seltzer. "Point Loma could not stop anything from Karly and Sierra on the right side, which opened things up for everybody else, too. It was a phenomenal match from top to bottom."
Biola improves to 19-6 overall and 15-3 PacWest to tie their PacWest win total from a year ago. Point Loma drops to 15-8 overall and 12-4 in conference.
The Eagles are done for the week and have their last road matches of the season due up next week at Dominican (6-15, 4-12 PacWest) and Notre Dame de Namur (7-18, 6-11 PacWest).
