BYU won its third consecutive match Friday night against Concordia, but for the first time in nearly seven weeks it didn’t take five sets to do so. The Cougars needed just three sets at the Smith Fieldhouse to top Concordia and earn the sweep.
BYU won with set scores of 25-21, 29-27 and 25-21.
“We’ll take a win whenever we can,” BYU coach Shawn Olmstead said when asked about earning a sweep for the first time since February. “If (we’ve) got to play more or win in five or four I look at it like we get more opportunities to play and we need those reps.”
The Cougars found themselves in a fight early, despite playing in the Smith Fieldhouse for the first time since a Feb. 24 loss to UCLA.
“They scrapped,” Olmstead said of Concordia. “Credit to them, they didn’t just kind of fold and get out of here. … I don’t think we played the level we’d been playing this last little bit because the guys have been playing really, really well.”
BYU was on an upward trend coming into the night, sitting in third place in the MPSF thanks to three wins over its last four matches. Concordia, on the other hand, was going in the opposite direction, remaining winless in league play and looking for its first victory in over a month.
Still, the Golden Eagles didn’t make things easy for the Cougars Friday. BYU used a .583 kill percentage in the initial set to win game one. The Cougars began to separate themselves from the Golden Eagles midway through the set, scoring four straight points to take a 16-12 advantage. BYU never trailed in set one again, staying in control, but never extending its lead past four points.
The Cougars trailed for most of the next set, going ahead 2-1 and not again until 18-17 off a service ace from senior opposite hitter Kupono Browne. The two schools went back and forth from there, having identical scores from 20 through 27 before BYU scored the final two points to go up by two sets.
“Those sets can change things a lot,” Olmstead said of his team’s gritty second set victory. “It was big time. … We had a couple set points, easy serves, and we just got hesitant and we talked to the guys about that. They’ve got to be confident all the time.”
BYU led nearly the entire final set of the night, showing little hesitancy and looking like it might run away with a lopsided victory. After stretching its advantage out to as many as eight points, the Cougars had to fight off a Golden Eagles comeback that got the visitors to within two at 23-21. However, that would be as close as Concordia would get down the stretch, BYU scoring the next two points to finish the match.
“I was proud of the guys that they stuck with it,” Olmstead said. “You’ll take a win whenever you can get it. … They’re not as easy to come by as sometimes we’d like to think, so we’ll take a win for sure.”
BYU entered Friday’s match having defeated Concordia in nine consecutive meetings, only dropping four sets to the Golden Eagles over that span. Things remained much the same, with another one-sided victory for the Cougars.
Tomorrow night BYU will again face Concordia in the Smith Fieldhouse where it will also be honoring seniors Browne, Gavin Julien and Jon Stanley in the school’s final home match of the season. The contest is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. and can be viewed live on BYUtv.