#17 Pioneers end regular-season home schedule with win

Box Score
It wasn't as pretty as Coach Jim Giacomazzi might have wanted for their final home regular-season match, but it still counts as a win for the Wayland Baptist volleyball team.
 
"Efficiency has to be the rule of thumb when we run across a quality opponent, and we didn't have that all of the time today," Giacomazzi said after the Pioneers recorded a 25-20, 25-18, 25-15 Sooner Athletic Conference victory over Southwestern Assemblies of God University at Hutcherson Center on Saturday morning.
 
The Pioneers (27-5, 12-2 SAC) came from behind in every set against the Lady Lions (15-13, 8-6), who are in a battle for third place in the conference. Wayland has a lock on the No. 2 seed in the SAC Tournament, which gets under way in a couple of weeks, most likely at No. 7 Oklahoma Baptist.
 
"We're at the point in the season that we're now taking one step forward and, some days, three steps backwards," Giacomazzi said. "That's the opposite from what we were doing at the beginning of the season. We need to gain some footing and try to move up to the next level, and that next level is more mental than physical.
 
"If you're not paddling and you're going upstream, guess what?"
 
Saturday's first set was the closest of the three, tied at 17 until Wayland scored four straight points to begin taking control. A kill by senior Grecia Rivera finished it up.
 
Set No. 2 went back and forth and was knotted at 13-all when the Pioneers once again started to assert themselves by recording seven of the next eight points for a 20-14 advantage. A kill by another senior, Claire Jacobsma, closed out that set.
 
The Lady Lions owned their largest lead of the match to open the third set, going up 4-1. Once again, WBU bounced back in a hurry, tying it at 5. The Pioneers began making their moves this time when it was tied at 9. With Shahala Hawkins serving, Wayland reeled off seven unanswered points, including a pair of aces. From there, the Pioneers cruised to the finish line, with a block by Hawkins closing out the match.
 
Rivera paced Wayland with 14 kills, a .483 hitting percentage and nine digs. Chelsey Driskill added a dozen kills and hit .348 while getting three solo blocks. Hawkins, who had seven kills, ended with two solo blocks, two block assists and eight digs, same as Mercades Torres. T-Keeyah Hall, who split time at libero with Torres, had seven digs while Ashlyn Western produced 26 assists.
 
Wayland hit .259 as a team and had 20 combined hitting, serving and blocking errors.
 
"We're trying to minimize our mistakes and make the most out of each minute," Giacomazzi said. "Our challenge was in the first set we had nine errors. You're going to have some errors, but when you serve it out of bounds or block into the net, that's not efficiency. You're allowing the other team to stay in the match."
 
SAGU, meanwhile, hit just .060 and committed 24 errors.
 
"They didn't have many people do well at all," Giacomazzi said, adding that Wayland's defense played a large part in that. "Us picking up their swings and us blocking them had a lot to do with it."
 
Wayland ends the regular-season on the road against John Brown (13-17, 7-6) in Siloam Springs, Ark., on Friday night and in Shawnee, Okla., against St. Gregory's (6-21, 3-11) on Saturday morning. JBU is one of the teams battling for third place with SAGU, Texas Wesleyan and Oklahoma City University. The Pioneers defeated John Brown and St. Greg's in three in the first half of SAC play.