SEATTLE – If it had to be their last college volleyball match …
 
… then what a last match it was.
 
Hannah Hair had 16 kills on an error-free hitting day and Seattle Pacific's eight seniors combined for 51 kills, 43 assists, 18 blocks, and seven service aces as the Falcons beat Montana State Billings on Senior Day in Brougham Pavilion, 3-1.
 
Scores of the Great Northwest Athletic Conference contest were 25-12, 17-25, 25-17, 25-16.
 
That gave SPU (10-16, 10-8 GNAC) three straight wins to end the season and eight victories in its final 11 matches after a 2-13 start. That helped create a tie for fifth place in the final standings with Alaska Anchorage.
 
"Our team settled into a good groove and continued to not give up and continued to improve," coach Jason Rhine said. "That helped us compete with pretty much everyone in the conference the second time around and get some big wins against some top teams and compete well in each match we went into. I thought they continued to play hard, and it was a fun way to finish."
 




Hair's 16 kills came on 25 attacks for a .640 hitting percentage on her last day as a Falcon. The fifth-year middle blocker also had five blocks (two solo), giving her 158 for the season and 629 for her career.
 
Fellow fifth-year middle Allison Wilks had 10 kills on .533 hitting and five blocks. Fifth-year opposite Erin Smith added 12 kills on 400 hitting and seven blocks (two solo). Fifth-year outside Sydney Perry had 12 kills and hit .278.
 
Senior setter Emily Tulino logged her final double-double, thie one with 42 assists and 13 digs. It was her 14th of the season and 38th of her career. The 42 assists pushed her season total to 833 and her career tally to 2,424. She is just the fourth setter in the 39-year history of the program to lead the team in assists all four years of her career.
 
Senior defensive specialist Abigail Cunningham went out with a career-high four service aces. She had the ball for the last nine points of a 10-0 Falcon scoring run in the first set. Then in the third. Cunningham was on the serve for two surges: the last five points of a 6-0 and the last three of a 4-0.

 

"We had a big run in the first set. People were serving really tough, and we were playing balls out really quickly in transition" Rhine said. "So we were hitting at a good percentage, and it was a fun way to start out."
 
Seattle Pacific was down 6-2 in the opening minutes of the match before that 10-0 run made it 12-6. By the time Hair hammered a kill on set point, the Falcons had outscored MSUB by a 23-6 margin after theearly deficit.
 
The Yellowjackets (7-21, 0-18 GNAC) edged ahead in the second set with four straight points, turning an 11-11 tie into a 15-11 lead. They gradually extended it to as many as seven points to level the match at 1-1.
 
SPU's six consecutive points early in the third helped push a narrow 5-4 edge all the way up to 11-4. Billings never got closer than six. The Falcons then jumped to a 7-1 lead in Set 4 and gradually kept adding to it.
 
Of the match's final six points (two of which were Billings attack errors), one came on a kill by Hair, two on kills by Wilks, and match point was secured on a kill by Smith.
 
"It was really fun to have some cool individual performances and play well together as a group," Rhine said of his seniors. "All of them out there were contributing in different ways – blocks, kills, digs, passing and setting. It was fun for them to finish together in that way."
 
BY THE NUMBERS
-- SPU hit .339 for the day with 54 kills and just 12 errors on 124 attacks. The final mark included an astounding .519 in Set 1 (15-1-27), .400 in Set 3 (13-1-30) and .345 in Set 4 (12-2-29). That gave the Falcons .300-plus hitting in eight of their last 11 sets. The final mark of .339 was its second-highest of the season, trailing only the .340 (42-7-103) at Saint Martin's on Nov. 14.
-- Billings finished the day at .085 (39-28-129). That's the fifth time of the season that the Falcons have kept an opponent below .100.
-- Allison Wilks' five blocks gave her a final career total of 393. She and Hannah Hair thus combined for 1,022.
-- Hair doesn't normally serve, but took three on Saturday. One of them dropped in for an ace, just the second of her career. The other one came in her fifth match as a freshman during one of the Covid spring non-conference contests at Northwest University.
-- SPU's last three wins – at Saint Martin's, at Western Oregon, and Saturday vs. Billings – wrapped up season sweeps in all three series.
-- Wilks finished the season at .362 hitting and Hair was at .337.
-- Emily Tulino came in averaging 7.99 assists per set. In a four-set match – as Saturday's turned out to be – she would have needed at least 41 assists to push her average to 8.0.  She wound up with 42 and finished at 8.09.
 
UP NEXT
SPU's season is complete. The Falcons will return to action next September. Their preseason schedule is still in the planning stages. Conference play begins on the third weekend of the month
 
 
NCAA WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL
Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024
Brougham Pavilion / Seattle, Wash.
 
Seattle Pacific 3, Montana State Billings 1
 
Set scores – 25-12, 17-25, 25-17, 25-16.
 
Service aces – MSUB 4 (Stuff 2), SPU 7 (Cunningham 4).
Kills – MSUB 39 (Taulua 15), SPU 54 (Hair 16, Smith 12, Perry 12, Wilks 10).
Assists – MSUB 38 (Allen 17), SPU 47 (Tulino 42).
Digs – MSUB 56 (Funk 16), SPU 54 (Tulino 13).
Block assists / solo – MSUB 2 / 2 solo (Scott 0 / 2 solo) SPU 14 / 5 solo (Smith 5 / 2 solo, Wilks 4 / 1 solo, Hair 3 / 2 solo).
Hitting (kills-errors-attacks) – MSUB 39-28-129—085 (Scott 6-1-13—385), SPU 54-12-124—339 (Hair 16-0-25—640, Wilks 10-2-15—533, Smith 12-2-25—400).
Attendance – 131.
 
 
Records
Seattle Pacific 10-16, 10-8 GNAC.
Montana State Billings – 7-21, 0-18 GNAC.
 
 
Next match
Season complete.