VERMILLION, S.D. – South Dakota held serve on its home floor in turning back Oral Roberts in four sets in Saturday's Summit League volleyball match in front of 1,043 inside the Sanford Coyote Sports Center.
 
The Coyotes, now 9-0 at home this season, improved to 13-8 overall and 10-2 in the Summit following the 25-20, 25-22, 19-25, 25-12 victory.
 
"This was a huge win for us," coach Leanne Williamson said. "Going into this weekend we knew that this was an opportunity for us to create a little more separation, be able to control our own destiny."
 
South Dakota, who downed Kansas City on Thursday, is in second place in the Summit League with three weeks left (six matches) in the regular season.
 
Omaha, thanks to its five-set win at Denver and sweeping the Pioneers, remained in first place at 11-1 while Denver slipped to 9-2, even with South Dakota in the loss column. Kansas City and Oral Roberts each have four losses, now two back in the loss column.
 
The Coyotes responded after dropping set three by coming out and hitting .519 in closing out the match in set four, producing 16 kills against only two errors in that final set.
 
Elizabeth Juhnke had eight (with no errors) of her match-high 22 kills in that fourth set while the junior posted her 11^th double-double of the season as she added 15 digs.
 
"They responded really well and we know there has been opportunities in the past where we haven't," said Williamson. "So happy with how we responded in that fourth set, we hit over .500 in that set, just a really, really good number.
 
"Blocking wise, we did make a couple of changes with what we needed to take away. We responded, learned and felt like we got better as the match went on and our serving got them out of system, especially in that fourth set."
 
Aimee Adams tallied 11 kills and six digs while Sami Slaughter had nine kills, Maddie Wiendefeld and Madison Harms eight each for an offense that hit over .300 for the third-straight match.
 
Madison Jurgens contributed 49 assists, nine digs, two kills and two aces while Lolo Weideman had 16 digs, six assists and four aces.
 
The Coyotes registered seven ace serves while also coming up with 60 digs.
 
South Dakota hits the road for matches on Thursday at Western Illinois and Saturday at St. Thomas.