Senior Nigh a success

It was a memorable senior night for Aggie outside hitter Monarisa Ale. “She was not going to let senior night be a bad night for her,” Head Coach Grayson DuBose said. Her 18 kills and .593 hitting percentage – both career highs – helped propel Utah State to a 3-1 win over the University of Nevada-Reno in the Spectrum Thursday night. The win means the Aggies (16-12 overall, 10-5 in the conference) can’t finish their Western Athletic Conference season in any worse than a third-place tie. But it was more than the career highs, a hot start – Ale started the match 10-of-11 on the attack – and a senior night win, for the first time ever, Ale’s mother got to watch her play in the Spectrum. It was a complete surprise to Ale, who didn’t realize her mother had flown in from Hawaii for the match until fellow senior Amanda Nielson told her to look up in the stands. On top of career highs for her daughter, Ale’s mother was treated to an exciting match. It was a night of runs, with each team taking their turn. The Aggies started out in the driver’s seat in Game 1, notching 16 kills and hitting .273 in a 30-28 victory. Everything wasn’t easy, though. Utah State built a lead as large as six points, but the Wolf Pack came back to tie the game and take a lead of 26-24, late. USU fought back on a series of Nielson kills to finish Nevada off. “We flowed at the right time, and they ebbed at the right time for us,” DuBose said. “It worked out OK for us at the end of the match, they were ebbing and we were flowing.” The Aggies were the ones ebbing in Game 2 as they fell behind early, allowing the Wolf Pack to build a lead of seven. Sticking with the theme of the evening, USU came back, propelled by two aces from sophomore middle blocker Danielle Taylor to get the Aggies within three points, but Nevada’s attack put Utah State away for a 30-26 win. USU looked flat in Game 2, but still managed to hit .333. Despite the good hitting average, Utah State gave the Wolf Pack 12 points, five of which came on service errors. “A lot of times we’re down, and we stay down, like in the second game we were down, and everyone could see it on our faces,” Nielson said. “Everyone just didn’t want to go out like that.” Until late in Game 3, it looked like the Aggies were going to stay down. With Utah State trailing 27-24, it looked like the Aggies would head into Game 4 in a 2-1 hole, but things turned around for the USU. Fueled by four Wolf Pack attack errors and one service error, the Aggies came back to take Game 3, 30-28. The momentum from its comeback win carried over into Game 4 for Utah State, as the Aggies jumped out to grab a lead that swelled to seven points midway through the final game. But staying true to form, Nevada would make a run. The Wolf Pack clawed their way back into the game with good hitting from seniors Teal Ericson and Karly Sipherd. Ultimately, more errors down the stretch, killed Nevada’s shot at a fifth game, finally losing 30-25. Although the Wolf Pack’s errors gave the Aggies the match, Utah State was far from perfect on the night, recording 27 attack errors – five behind Nevada’s 32 – and 11 service errors, with eight of those coming in the first two games. “I thought there were times when we did some neat things and there were times when we did some boneheaded things, and it’s just like, ‘Don’t do so many boneheaded things,'” DuBose said. Despite the boneheaded things DuBose talked about, the Aggies were able to get on runs at the right time. “When you get to 28 you want to be the guy running, not the guy chasing,” he said. Late in many of the games, it was clutch hitting by seniors Nielson and Ale and junior outside hitter Melissa Osterloh that enabled the Aggies to get on late rolls. Osterloh finished the match two digs shy of her seventh double-double. She had 16 kills and eight digs on the night. It was the seniors, Ale and Nielson, who stick out on the stat sheet on senior night. Nielson said she was emotional before the match, when she and Ale were honored. “You just think about this everyday when you’re a freshman,” she said. “When times are hard, you’re like, ‘This is hard, I can’t wait for it to be over.’ But then you get there and it went fast and some of the best times of my life have been here.” – da.bake@aggiemail.usu.edu