SIOUX FALLS – South Dakota is returning to the Summit League tournament championship match after outlasting Kansas City in a five-set semifinal thriller on Friday inside the Sanford Pentagon.
The Coyotes turned the tables on the Roos after dropping both regular season meetings, also in five sets, by prevailing when it mattered most 23-25, 25-22, 25-18, 22-25, 15-11.
South Dakota (14-6) will face top-seeded Denver (14-2) in Saturday's 2 p.m. championship match, the second time in three seasons the two have squared off with an NCAA Tournament berth at stake.
"I'm excited, with not having a season in the fall, it's good to be back in the championship environment and just that win over Kansas City, we needed it," junior setter
Madison Jurgens said. "We needed that one as a team and I think we have all the confidence going in the world, going into tomorrow."
Jurgens directed the offense that boasted a .233 team hitting percentage while three Coyotes reached double figures in kills as
Sami Slaughter and
Elizabeth Juhnke had 21 apiece and
Madison Harms chipped in 11. Slaughter and Juhnke became the first set of teammates this season during Summit League play to each hit the 20-kill mark in the same match.
"I thought we played really hard," said Slaughter. "We just decided to focus on our side, we knew what we had to do we didn't want to let one play dictate the game"
The back-and-forth match, very similar to the team's two regular season meetings, featured 42 ties and 21 lead changes, including 10 ties and five lead changes in the fifth and deciding set.
Slaughter had four of the Coyotes eight kills in the fifth set while both teams played high-level volleyball to close the match as South Dakota hit .429 and Kansas City hit .385 in the final frame.
"I think we just stayed very disciplined, we made some plays," coach
Leanne Williamson said. "We came up with some big digs at times, but I think we were able to get a few other people involved too, offensively.
"From the service side, we got them out of system a little bit more. They were very good defensive team, they were a good passing team, too. So to get them out of system for a run can be very important for us and that's really why we were able to go on that a little bit more efficiently, but it just comes down to being able to be scrappy, being able to play hard."
Defensively, five Coyotes recorded double digits in digs, led by junior libero
Lolo Weideman with 27. Juhnke had 19 digs while Jurgens contributed 17 to go with 50 assists and
Aimee Adams and
Brooklyn Bollweg added 10 digs apiece.
"Well that was incredible," said Williamson of Weideman. "I told her after the match what a stud tonight, i think she kept us in a lot of rallies.
"She played probably one of her best matches of the year tonight and I think you know going back to the last time we played Kansas City she was coming off an injury so I think there were a few things that she thought she could have done better and she did that tonight. I thought she responded really well. She was clutch for us, you know, and I think that's a big part of it. She passed well defensively, she kept us, like I said, in a lot of plays, she was fearless."
With the match even at one set apiece and the third set even at 18-18, Harms personally took part in helping the Coyotes score the final seven points of the set, getting three kills and two blocks during the spurt that ended on a service ace from Jurgens and a kill from Slaughter.
Harms hit .391 and had six blocks (three solo and three assisted) while Juhnke hit .230 and Slaughter .275 despite taking 61 and 51 attacks, respectively.
South Dakota won the only regular season meeting with Denver as match two was canceled due to a March snowstorm in Colorado. While Denver has reached eight-straight Summit League title games, South Dakota won the previous meeting in five sets in 2018 to earn its first-ever NCAA Division I tournament berth.
"This is what we work for, you know, this is what we talked about at the beginning of the season," Williamson said. "Not like we were looking ahead, but that's what our ultimate destination is, you know, we had to fight to get there, it wasn't easy.
"We felt like we had some matches throughout the year that we could have controlled more, but this team really bought into learning and getting better, trusting the process and I think it came to a head tonight, of having to work towards getting ourselves into that championship game again. It feels like a long time since the last time we were even in the tournament, obviously, but this is the last time that we were in the championship match so I know our players are excited for that opportunity and I think that's something that we have to constantly look at, is an opportunity, we had to earn it. We had to find ways to, fight through some things in order to get ourselves in this position, but now we get to go play another match as a team with this group of players and this group of coaches and I definitely think that they're ready for that."
