Box Score SAN ANTONIO, TX (11.16.13) - The UT Dallas volleyball team had it's season come to a close Saturday afternoon with a 3-0 loss to No. 3 California Lutheran in the second round of the NCAA Division III National Tournament. CLU downed the Comets, 25-19, 25-20, 25-16.
The Comets, who finished the year with a record-setting 31-9 record, got a match-high eight kills from both
Taylour Toso and
Abbie Barth as they closed out the winningest season in program history with their first trip to the National Tournament since 2009. UTD's 31 wins on the season is the most in the program's 10-year history and ended one victory shy of the American Southwest Conference record.
A first-round victory over Pamona-Pitzer was UTD's first in the national tournament.
Against the third-ranked CLU squad (which eventually won the regional tournament and qualfies for the national tournament with a 33-1 record), UTD got off to a slow start in the first set. The Comets hit just .070 in the opening set as no Comet collected more than two kills in the 25-19 defeat. UTD did cut the CLU lead down to 14-11 on a pair of Barth kills midway through the set, and were down just 19-17 before the Regals finished on a 6-2 run to take the 1-0 lead in the match.
In the second set, the Comets had their best game attacking, hitting .238, but had to play catchup again. CLU took and early lead, but UTD pulled to within a single point seven times before tying the set up at 20-20 on a Regal attack error. But CLU finished off the 25-20 win with five straight points to take command of the match at 2-0.
With that momentum, the Regals got off to a fast start in the final set, going on a 15-6 run to turn an early UTD lead into a 18-10 deficit. UTD played even the rest of the set, but was unable to avoid the three-game sweep - its second at the hands of CLU this season.
Meredith Crawford finished with seven kills while
Holyn Handley and
Blake Johnson each had five kills. Setter
Kayla Jordan finished with just 29 assists (9.7 per set) while libero
Mary Speights led the Comets with 12 digs.
Jordan was selected as UTD's representative on the NCAA Regional All-Tournament Team.
