Las Cruces, N.M. — Chicago State's historic 2021 volleyball season may have come to a close Thursday night in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The Cougars dropped a tightly-contested 3-2 decision (25-17, 25-23, 25-19, 25-18, 16-14) to the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks in the first round of the Western Athletic Conference Tournament.
Chicago State won the second and fourth sets, pushing the match to a deciding fifth set. The Lumberjacks gained the early upper hand in the last set but CSU battled back from a 7-1 deficit and staved off two match points at 14-12 and 14-13, to tie the match 14-14 where the Lumberjacks capitalized, winning on an attack error and putting the match away with a service ace.
"Unfortunately it came down to serve and pass and we had too many unforced errors," Cougars head coach
Tony Trifonov said. "It was a great season, there's a lot to be proud of and the kids worked hard to change the culture, and that's not easy to do, but they set the bar for future teams."
The Cougars now wait to see if the team receives an at-large postseason tournament invitation. With a program record 17 wins, this has been the most prolific season CSU's Division I history (since 1988). Prior to this year, no Cougars volleyball team had ever won more than 12 matches in a season. WAC Coach of the Year
Tony Trifonov has engineered one of college volleyball's all-time dramatic turnarounds, from a one-win spring season to a 17-win fall.
WAC Player of the Year
Yanlis Feliz led the conference with 499 regular-season kills and an astounding 5.25 kills per set. Feliz ranked in the top three in all of NCAA Division I in both categories. She led all players with 24 kills in tonight's match while
Jaclyn Inclan led all players with 15 digs and 41 assists.
In the first set, the Lumberjacks came out hot as they posted a 3-0 scoring run with two kills and a service ace as they stunned the Cougars early.
However, the Cougars answered back with a 2-0 run of their own with a ferocious kill by
Yanlis Feliz and an attacking error by the Lumberjacks as they closed in on a tie at a 3-2 score.
Nonetheless, SFA once again added to their lead with the help of two consecutive attacking errors by the Cougars as this trend of play echoed throughout the set as CSU would close in on a tie, yet SFA would always gain their lead right back.
To finish the set, from a score of 20-15, SFA went on a 5-2 run to finish the Cougars which was capped off with a kill by Valeria Rosado which ended the set with a score of 25-17 as the Lumberjacks cruised to the first-set win.
To start off the second set, the Cougars were awarded their first point off of a service error by the Lumberjacks, yet they quickly answered back with a kill by Payton Cerny which tied it all up at 1-1.
This echoed throughout the set as neither team was able to produce a significant lead. It wasn't until a 20-20 score that the Cougars finally established momentum over the Lumberjacks with a 5-3 scoring run, featuring three astonishing kills by
Mesalina Severino and two, respectively, by
Ezgi Dokuzlar and
Yanlis Feliz, as Chicago State won the second set and knotted the match 1-1.
The Cougars jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the third set with a Feliz kill and an attack error by SFA. The Lumberjacks answered with a 5-0 scoring run which tilted the lead as the Lumberjacks led 6-2, forcing a Cougars timeout.
SFA continued the momentum out of the break and cruised to a 25-19 third-set win, capped off with a service ace by Ariana Pagan.
The fourth set began similarly to the second, with the Cougars and Lumberjacks once again beginning with a 1-1 tie. with a service ace by Alyssa Ortega followed by a stellar kill by Dokuzlar.
This continued on to a 4-4 tie, when the Cougars rampaged on with a 5-0 scoring run which featured two kills by Feliz and three continuous attacking errors by the Lumberjacks, and the Cougars doubled up the Lumberjacks 8-4.The Cougars rode the early momentum, much like SFA in the third set, all the way to a set win, leading to the fifth and deciding set.
Having won the quarterfinal, Stephen F. Austin advances WAC Tournament semifinal, where they'll face the winner of No. 7 Utah Valley and No. 2 New Mexico State at 8:00 p.m. CT.
Information on how to watch, follow and attend the remainder of the tournament is
available here.
About Chicago State
Chicago State University Athletics is comprised of 15 intercollegiate teams involving over 150 student-athletes that compete in basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, tennis, indoor and outdoor track and volleyball. CSU held memberships in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and NCAA Division II before transitioning to NCAA Division I in 1994. Melvin Bland was the first CSU student-athlete to gain NAIA All-American status in 1974 as a wrestler. Fred Evans became the first black swimmer ever to win a national championship in 1975. CSU's women's basketball team earned a spot in the 2011 Women's Basketball Invitational and CSU's men's basketball team won the 2013 Great West Conference Tournament title and made an appearance in the CollegeInside.com Postseason Tournament (CIT). The Men's Outdoor Track & Field 4x100-Meter Relay team were 2019 Honorable Mention All-Americans and WAC Champions. Their feat marked the first time the Chicago State's men's track & field program was represented at the national meet.
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