Sept. 10, 2003

Box Score

DENVER - The University of Denver volleyball team used 35 combined kills from freshman Lisa Hunter (St. Louis, Mo.) and junior Mary England (Castle Rock, Colo.) and held off an attempted rally from Wyoming Wednesday night in a 3-1 win over the Cowgirls at Hamilton Gymnasium. With the win the Pioneers improve to 6-2 on the season, nearly matching their win total of a year ago when Denver went 7-20. Wyoming drops to 5-2.

Denver won the first game 30-25 behind a team-high five kills from senior Andrea Baron (West Vancouver, B.C.). The Pioneers recorded an attack percentage of .243 for the first game and never trailed in the game in taking a 1-0 lead. The second game was more of the same for Denver, as the Pioneers jumped out to a 7-3 lead early on and led by as many as eight points during the game before a late Wyoming rally cut the Pioneers lead to 29-27. But an attack error on game point by Cowgirl Leah Powers gave the Pioneers a hard-fought 30-27 game two win.

The third game was all Wyoming as Denver had just two leads in the entire game and helped the Cowgirls out with eight service errors in a 30-25 loss. Wyoming led by as many as eight points at 20-12 before the Pioneers cut the lead to 21-19 but it would be as close as Denver would get the rest of the way as Wyoming cut the Denver lead to 2-1.

Game four was a hard fought game for both teams as Wyoming desperately tried to stay in the match and the Pioneers tried to put the finishing touches on its sixth win in eight tries this season. The Pioneers jumped out to a 7-4 early lead before Wyoming countered with the next four points to even the game at 7-apiece. The two teams traded points for most of the rest of the game until Wyoming looked as if they would force a decisive fifth game when they grabbed a 29-27 lead. But Denver wouldn't falter, as Baron came through with a kill to cut the lead to one and another Wyoming attack error knotted the game at 29-all. Two more Wyoming attack errors following its last timeout gave the Pioneers a hard-fought 31-29 win.

"I was happy we were able to gut this one out," head coach Beth Kuwata said. "We did a lot of things to make this match more difficult than it probably should have been with our serving, especially in the third game. But I was really happy with how we hung in there in the fourth game after trailing for most of the game and we never quit. We're going to have to do that more this season if we want to win more matches.

Denver is next in action on Friday, Sept. 12 when they host the Pioneer Classic tournament in Hamilton Gymnasium. The first game begins at 5 p.m. with Tulane vs. Fordham and Denver will play UC-Riverside at 7:30 p.m.