Box Score On the eve what will be their biggest match of the season so far, the Wayland Baptist volleyball team took care of business by taking care of Mid-America Christian on Friday night in Hutcherson Center, winning 25-18, 25-18, 25-12.
Now comes a showdown with No. 24 Oklahoma City University as the top two teams in the Sooner Athletic Conference go head-to-head back in the Hutch starting at 11 a.m. Saturday.
"We've worked hard, and the last two weeks we've been focusing on this match. We're hoping all the hard work comes together," Wayland coach
Jim Giacomazzi said of the match pitting his Pioneeers (22-6 overall, 11-1 SAC) against the league-leading Stars (17-5, 12-0).
At stake is the No. 1 seed in the SAC Tournament and the right to host through the tourney championship. Currently, OCU owns that right due to a 16-25, 25-18, 25-17, 25-20 victory over Wayland when the teams met last month in Oklahoma City. A Pioneer win on Saturday would tie the teams at the top of the standings and could result in a shared championship if both teams win out, which would prompt tie-breakers in order to determine the top tournament seed.
Giacomazzi said the Pioneers have to do at least three things in order to knock off the Stars.
"We have to serve our zones, set up a quality block and hit the ball where they aren't," he said.
The Pioneers did a pretty good job of that against MACU (14-10, 4-9) on Friday, and did it all very well in the lopsided third set.
"We've been working on our blocks, and we had a good third set. We came up with five blocks in that set. We also did a good job minimizing hitting errors," Giacomazzi said.
Wayland hit .269 for the match, including .375 the first set and .325 the third. The Pioneers struggled in the second with seven hitting errors.
"That's too many. We need to keep our mistakes a lot less than that," Giacomazzi said.
MACU hit just .047.
The coach praised all-American middles
Shahala Hawkins and
Chelsey Driskill, who had 16 and 12 kills and hit .367 and .440, respectively.
 "Our middles have been under the weather, but they did a fantastic job. They had some really good numbers," he said. "Cindy (Horn) did a good job, too. She minimized her hitting errors (two), and Mallorie (Ellis) did a better job keeping her errors down (two). Jessica (Stohlmann) did a pretty good job with three kills in eight tries without an error (.375)."
Wayland dug 53 balls, with
Rossanna Ramos and
Cat Wiechmann getting 13 apiece.
"We worked really hard in the third set and did a lot better getting those," Giacomazzi said.
"We made a lot more substitutions than we normally make just to emphasize mistakes are hurting us and we've had too many of those over the last couple of weeks," he added. "Unfortunately when the setter makes a mistake that's a double-change; it takes our right-side hitter out. It really hurts us when we make mistakes. They're starting to understand when one player makes a mistake it affects two or three other people."
Emily Welch tallied 25 assists and
Tyler Gasaloga 15.
"We still had pretty good assist numbers with our setters. Even though Emily was in the front row blocking sometimes, that didn't hurt us much," Giacomazzi said. "I'd prefer both setters communicate with the hitters a little better."
Wayland wound up with six total blocks, with Hawkins getting three assists and Driskill one solo and two assists. The Pioneers are donating $5 for every block to the Susan G. Komen Foundation as part of its annual Block for the Cure campaign. Admission at this and Saturday's match also will be donated to Komen.
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