Final Stats

INDIANAPOLIS - Kaitlyn Hickey tallied 14 kills and Meredith Farkas added 12 kills as the IUPUI Jaguars swept past South Dakota volleyball 25-15, 25-23, 25-16 in the Summit League Tournament semifinals held in The Jungle on Saturday night. The loss ended South Dakota's season with a 19-12 record.

The win advanced the Jaguars (20-12) to the championship match, which will be held tomorrow at 3 p.m. CT. They will play Denver, who swept North Dakota State on Saturday, for the league's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

"IUPUI came out and played extremely strong," South Dakota head coach Leanne Williamson said. "They knew they had to play their best volleyball and they did just that. We got better defensively as the match went on, but it just wasn't enough in the end to get that win."

Beth Howard led the Jaguars on defense with 18 digs, while Hickey added 15 digs. Alexis Mapes tallied 31 assists and 10 digs.

Kendall Kritenbrink was the only Coyote to finish with double-digit kills, ending the match with 11. Riley Haug led USD defensively with 12 digs and Brittany Jessen had a double-double with 31 assists and 11 digs. Audrey Reeg added eight kills, nine digs and three total blocks, while Melissa Firtko added seven kills and three blocks.

The Jaguars out-killed the Coyotes 44-33 and held a 57-45 advantage in digs. They also held slight edges in aces (7-5) and blocks (6-5).

IUPUI out-killed the Coyotes 19-11 in the first set. Hickey tallied eight kills on nine attacks and recorded seven of IUPUI's 22 digs in the set. The Jags had a hitting percentage of .472 in the set while USD hit a .167 clip.

The Coyotes out-killed IUPUI in set two (12-9), but couldn't overcome six Jaguar aces in the set. Kritenbrink had four kills to lead USD while no Jaguar had more than two kills in the set. The set saw 14 ties and seven lead changes.

The Jags had 16 kills and just four attack errors in the final set. Farkas and Hickey had five kills each. The Jags broke the set open on a 8-1 run that made a 9-9 tie to a 17-10 IUPUI lead.

It was the last game for a trio of Coyote seniors: Kritenbrink, Firtko and Haug. Each of them will leave the program with their names etched into USD's record books. Kritenbrink leaves as USD's all-time career kills leader at 1,925, Firtko ranks second in career total blocks at 306 and Haug leaves third in career digs at 1,531.

"All three seniors have left a lasting impression on this program," Williamson said. "They're going to be players that we are going to talk about to our underclassmen and future players on how to be seniors and how to push for every single goal. From the time they were freshman to tonight, they've made huge strides and have taken this program to another level."

South Dakota is expected to return four starters from this year's team, which set a new program record for Summit League wins (12) and tallied wins over big name programs Arkansas, Colorado and Creighton.

"This year was a great stepping stone," Williamson said. "The team this year set a standard for future teams on where this program should be, and taught us the little things that we need to do still in order to get to the next level, win a conference championship and to get to the NCAA Tournament."