FORT COLLINS — For UNLV, Friday night was a case of the wrong place, wrong time.
Colorado State’s volleyball team wasn’t going to be taken down again. Not at home. Not two nights after losing a run at perfection.
It just was not going to happen.
“I don’t think it mattered for us,” senior Sam Peters said. “That was a rough loss on Wednesday, and we wanted to come back. I know us seniors really wanted to have a win on our senior night, and we have such a great team behind us, I know they wanted to win for us and ourselves. We weren’t going to let anything stand in the way of that.”
Especially not the Rebels, who went down in three tidy sets, 25-15, 25-9, 25-21 as the No. 9 Rams walked off the court with their fifth consecutive Mountain West championship.
The trophy the Rams (28-1, 19-1 MW) were presented with after the match was one they had earned six matches ago, so there was no edge to the evening that way. What provided it was the fact CSU had lost for the first time all year two nights earlier, and on their home floor even.
They were nearly flawless on the attack in the first two sets and survived a lull in the third, but hit .337 against the Rebels. True freshman Michelle Lawrence led the team with 11 kills, and Peters and Reynolds had 10 each. It wasn’t much different for a team that boasts five players with more than 200 kills on the year.
“I can tell you this, the lesson that I’m sure these guys have learned, that I have learned, is that losing as much star-power as we lost last year, the biggest trait that came out of this year is unselfishness,” Hilbert said. “To be honest, that is it. That’s giving. That’s what we talk about when we say we want to be a giving person. This team has shown that unselfishness and discipline can win a lot of games.”
But what Hilbert said made it all tick Friday was the play of the back row. Passing and serving well throughout the match made setter Deedra Foss’ night that much easier, finishing with 41 assists. Libero Jaime Colaizzi had 22 digs in the match, with Dri Culbert (16) and Cassidy Denny (10) also in double figures.
When it came to long rallies, the Rams were at their peak, and they usually came out the other end with a positive result. Hilbert said the team produced a couple of plays in transition that showed him just how good they really are on the defensive end.
“When we played UNLV, they dug everything that we hit at them at their place, so we knew tonight that they were going come out really good defensively, so we knew we had to match that and play better,” Foss said. “I think knowing that, we came out and just played with everything’s-up attitude, and that’s what happened.”
Wednesday’s loss stung, but the players said after they met Thanksgiving morning for film and practice, they were ready to move forward.
“I think for me personally, by the next morning I was already moving on and focusing,” Peters said. “We had film early on Thanksgiving, so it was time to move on to the next game. It’s one of those things you learn from.”
The Rams had just two hitting errors in the first set, none in the second as they limited the Rebels to single-digits, the first time all season the team has done that to an opponent.
While the third set had a rough start — CSU trailed 4-1 when Hilbert called a timeout — it rallied fast and strong and limited UNLV to just seven kills in the set. Sekola Falemaka, who had eight kills in the first set, finished with just 10 in the match as the team hit .034.
For the players, it was the perfect way to head into the postseason. The Rams will wait until Sunday to find out their NCAA Tournament fate. They know they are in, but Hilbert is still holding out hope the team will be one of the top 16 teams in the draw and host a pod in the first round. Selections will be announced on ESPNU starting at 7:30 p.m. Sunday.
“If they do it like they’ve done it in the past few years, we won’t,” Hilbert said of hosting. “Part of me thinks there are people on that committee who understand how good of an event it would be to be here. Hopefully they’ll look for reasons to slot us in there. I think we’ll move up in RPI this week, but it’s going to just depend on other little things.”
Which is what the Rams counted on in turning a rebuilding year into another dominating run through the Mountain West.
Mike Brohard can be reached at 635-3633, mbrohard@reporter-herald.com and @mbrohard
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