The BYU women's volleyball team has perfect timing. The Cougars, whose season could have would have come to an abrupt end with a loss Wednesday night, instead turned in their finest outing of the year.
The result was a relatively easy, 15-5, 15-10, 15-8 victory over Houston in a battle of two teams of Cougars in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at the Smith Fieldhouse."We played our game tonight," said Cougar coach Elaine Michaelis. "Our defense was awesome. We played our best defense of the year and it was our best overall match of the year. We've peaked at a good time."
The Cougars, who improved to 21-6 on the year, will face 30-2 Michigan State, the sixth-ranked team in the nation, in a second-round NCAA match in East Lansing, Mich. Saturday.
BYU threw the shorter Houston Cougars off their game early in the match with several big stuff blocks. Houston wasn't blocked as much in the final two games, but the first-game putbacks by BYU's Ann-Mari Linqvist, Kori Rogers and Amy Steele were in the backs of the minds of the Cougars from Texas throughout the evening.
"After the first game we eliminated the big stuff blocks BYU was getting, but we made too many mistakes," Houston coach Bill Walton said. "We didn't make mistakes because we have bad players. We made mistakes because we were trying to get away from their big block."
As a result, Houston hit just .034 as a team compared to BYU's .205 hitting percentage.
"Our blocking paved the way for us tonight," said junior outside hitter Gale Johnson.
Steele, a 6-2 sophomore middle blocker who was recently named as the Co-WAC Player of the Year, led the way with 14 kills and four blocks. Lindqvist had eight blocks and a team-best 15 digs, while Angie Tanner and Johnson had 12 and 10 kills respectively.
"It was a great team effort tonight," Michaelis said.
BYU dominated the first game, but Houston opened up a 5-0 lead to start the second game. The Cougars scratched and clawed their way back and eventually won the hard-fought second game that lasted as long as the other two games combined.
"There were a lot of long rallies in the second game," Steele said. "There is nothing worse for a team's morale than to lose long rallies. We won a lot of the key rallies which helped to break their backs."
Houston was led by freshman Debbie Vokes, who had 13 kills. Nashika Stokes, who led Provo High to a 4A state championship in 1992, had six kills and eight digs in her first return visit to Utah since shortly after high school graduation.
"It was fun to see a lot of people I went to school with," said Stokes, who spent two years in the Beehive State. "I'm not (originally) from Utah, but it was still kind of like coming home."