LA MIRADA, Calif. --- Biola Volleyball began its senior week in a phenomenal fashion, downing the Point Loma Sea Lions in four sets (25-10; 23-25; 25-11; 25-23) to earn the season sweep over the third-place team in the PacWest Conference.
"This win felt so good," said senior outside hitter
Sabrina Winslow. "Going into it we knew they were going to battle with us and I think we did a great job not getting rattled when they fought back and we got the job done."
The Eagles began the match just about as well as possible. The team won the first six points of the match and eventually expanded that lead to 13-2 to force the visiting Sea Lions to burn both game-one timeouts way, way early.
The timeouts did not do much for the visitors as Biola won 12 of the next 20 to earn a very convincing game one win. Abby Brewster had the final four kills of the set registered by Biola and four of the last five from either team.
The Sea Lions' biggest struggle early on was getting a good pass up out of their serve-receive. The Eagles' servers were pounding their serves at one particular back row player and the strategy most definitely worked to get the Sea Lions out of sorts.
Point Loma did manage its one set win on the second game, but it was nearly a clean sweep as Biola rebounded from a tough start to that game to pull back even with the Sea Lions late. The Eagles trailed by five at two different parts of the second set, but BU used a late run of five out of six points to knot things at 22-22.
The Sea Lions got a kill and a block to find their first set point of the match and secured the game two win on their second chance at set point, tying things up at one game each.
Set three followed a very similar blueprint to set one, with Biola winning eight of the first 10 and eventually moving ahead 14-5. At that point, the Sea Lions' head coach Jonathan Scott put in most of his bench and Biola worked itself a dominant 25-11 set win.
Sabrina Winslow and Bekah Roth combined for seven of Biola's 12 kills in game three, which is when they really began to heat up for Biola on a night they'd both end up with 15+ kills.
Set four was almost an identical match to set two in that Point Loma again climbed out to a huge early lead, rebounding nicely from their tough set three and seeing a lot of success feeding the ball to Jamie Cymbulak.
The Sea Lions led 13-5 and seemed destined to push the match to five sets. But, a pair of back-to-back kills by Raegan Tjepkema and then three in a row from Winslow lit a fire under BU and helped the home team get back to at least within five at 16-11.
Point Loma shook off that mini run and still looked to be in good shape when a double by Biola put PLNU up 21-15 in the fourth. Then, something shifted on a massive kill from Sabrina Winslow on the left side. Next thing you know it was kill-kill-block-kill-att. Error-block and Biola had tied the match at 21 with six consecutive points.
The final point in that run was a big momentum builder, too, as Abigail Copeland stuffed the Sea Lions' leading attacker Madie Fox with a huge solo block.
Point Loma got a kill to pull back ahead, but then Winslow hit her NINTH kill of the fourth set to tie it back up, this time at 22. The Sea Lions once again got a side out to pull ahead and had a chance to earn themselves a set point serving up 23-22.
Instead, they hit the ball out two times in a row to give Biola match point at 24-23 with Winslow set to serve. Madison Beebe, who had six kills on a remarkable .452 clip, stepped up and got the game's final kill to send Biola fans home happy.
The scrappy play of the team's back row made the comeback possible and kept Biola in points all night long. Whether it was Sami Hover (23), Vanessa Garcia (12), Becca Branch (9) or even Raegan Tjepkema (8 digs), the Eagles' defense was fantastic.
Winslow led the team with 18 kills and Bekah Roth was second with 16. Then came Beebe's six and somewhere between 3-5 kills for four others in a total team effort on offense.
"Those matches are so fun especially being a senior," said Winslow. "These are the matches I want to remember. The heart and mental toughness from everyone on the team in that game was amazing!"
The Eagles hit .248 for the match, while holding Point Loma to just .051 to set a new season-low. Remarkably, Biola was able to hold Point Loma to just two total kills in set one and five kills in the third game. The Sea Lions hit negative in both sets.
All three of Biola's leading attackers hit at least .375. Biola held advantages in kills (56-35), aces (7-4), blocks (8-7) and assists (52-32) in a night of almost complete domination.
It brought back memories of last season's home match against Point Loma, which followed a very similar script.
The win gets Biola off to a favorable start to its final week of the season. The Eagles, now 15-13 overall and 12-8 in PacWest Conference competition, host Dominican (3-22; 3-17 PacWest) at 6 p.m. on Friday and Notre Dame de Namur (4-23; 3-16 PacWest) at 3 p.m. Saturday to close out the year.
