MORAGA, Calif. — Tuesday night marked the West Coast Conference home opener for Saint Mary's Volleyball, with the Dons coming to town from across the Bay. While San Francisco is certainly an improved team from their winless 2021 campaign, they still were not improved enough to take down a streaking Saint Mary's squad. The Gaels were able to attack their way to a three-set win over San Francisco with scores of 25-21, 25-19, and 25-21. Saint Mary's is now 6-5 (3-0) while the Dons drop to 7-6 (0-2).
 
TWIN TOWERS
Hawley Harrer self-proclaimed the combination of herself and Kristen Erland as the "Twin Towers," and they lived up to the billing on Tuesday night. Harrer led the Gaels with 14 kills, without an attack error, sporting a .519 hitting percentage. Erland was not far behind, racking up 12 kills and a hitting percentage of .450. It was a quiet night on the block for both Gaels, but what they did with their arms was special. They rank first and third on the team, respectively, in kills per set this season, and also have two of the top three hitting percentages on the squad.
 
GRINDING THROUGH THE MATCH
Despite fast starts from Saint Mary's in all three sets, they had to work to close out the Dons on Tuesday. The first set in particular looked like it could go the way of the visitors, with USF holding a 15-12 lead just past the midway point. Saint Mary's then scored six-straight points on an Ella Sandt serving run to take the lead, and then score 7 of the final 11 points after that to close it out. Defense was a theme of the second and third sets, with a lot of long rallies and scrappy plays on defense. The Dons hung around but the Gaels found a way to prevail by never letting USF get closer than three points late in either of the final two sets.
 
TIDBITS FROM THE DUB
The Gaels were actually out-hit on Tuesday night (.218 hitting percentage versus .221), but had 13 more kills than the Dons…Makenna Joyce was the leading digger with 14 on the night, part of 10 Gaels who had at least one dig…Sandt recorded a double-double with 28 assists and 11 digs…there were just three digs and three aces for the Gaels in the match…Saint Mary's is now 3-0 in West Coast Conference play for the first time since 2009, when they began 4-0 (eventually finished the year 13-1).
 
QUOTABLES
"We're playing better, and we're getting better, and we're learning some things. We just had a really good talk in the locker room about the things they learned from the two matches we had last weekend in the Northwest and applying those things. I just love to hear that and see that from our team that they're thinking about ways to get better, finding ways to get better, and taking advantage of lessons learned and implementing them in matches. They felt like they did that tonight." – head coach, Rob Browning
 
"We're playing with a really good sense of urgency and not waiting around for the other team to make errors, or we've been making plays on our side of the net and having urgency every point. So that's been really good and we've been playing clean volleyball, playing good defense, executing at the net. It's been really good." – Ella Sandt
 
UP NEXT
Saint Mary's will close out the second week of West Coast Conference play by taking on Pacific at their place on Friday night, with first serve set for 6:00 pm. The next three WCC matches will be away from home for the Gaels, including a SoCal swing next weekend at Pepperdine and LMU.