POCATELLO, Idaho – Idaho State (0-1) made a late surge in the season opener against Georgia Tech (1-0), but eventually fell 3-1 (25-19, 25-16, 23-25, 25-22) to the Hyatt Regency Invitational hosts at O'Keefe Gym Friday morning.
Senior
Abby Garrity paced the Bengals with a 15-kill match, hitting at a .250 clip and adding one service ace to her stat line.
Setter
Chelsea Johnson spread the ball on her way to a career-high 38 assists as seven Bengals earned a kill. The sophomore also recorded four kills on seven attempts and was one mark shy of earning a double-double with nine digs.
A few Bengals hit some career milestones with Keck reaching 200 assists (202) and Johnson recording her 100th assist (104).
Idaho State took an early lead in the match with
Brooke Pehrson recording the first kill of the season from the right side before freezing the Yellow Jackets on the serve receive. ISU built a 3-0 lead, but was forced to call a timeout following a 6-1 run by Georgia Tech.
The Yellow Jackets extended their lead to seven at 19-12, but the Bengals fought back, forcing a GT timeout and bringing the score to 21-19. Tech's Maddie Tippett took control of the serve and led her team to victory with a 4-0 run to finish the frame 25-19.
The Bengals never found traction in the second set, falling behind early and allowing the lead to swell to 10 multiple times. The Yellow Jackets hit at a staggering .500 percentage while putting up a wall at the net, recording five blocks. Georgia Tech headed to the locker room with a 2-0 advantage after taking the second set 25-16.
Facing elimination, ISU came out and traded points the entire third set, with neither team leading by more than three points at any time. The set featured seven lead changes and 13 ties.
With the score tied 21-21, the Yellow Jackets found open court and capitalized on an attacking error to force a timeout from the Bengals bench at 23-21. A kill from
Nicole Lee put Pehrson at the service line and the Bengals didn't surrender another point, winning 25-23 on Pehrson's second service ace of the match.
Idaho State remained even with Georgia Tech until the 11-11 mark of the fourth set. From that point on, the Bengals played catch-up, eventually dropping the set and the match with a 25-22 loss.
The Yellow Jackets had three players with double-digit kills, paced by Mikaila Dowd at 22. Dowd and Mariana Brambilla both earned double-doubles while Kodie Comby fell short by one dig. Comby led all attackers in the match with a .688 hitting percentage.
Georgia Tech held the advantage in kills (55-49), hitting percentage (.224-.146) and blocks (13-8) while recording a higher side-out percentage. Idaho State recorded just one block in the first two sets, but rallied for seven in the final two. The Bengals recorded six service aces, but were harmed by service errors, recording at least two in every set.
Idaho State has a few hours to regroup before taking on Georgetown at 2:30 p.m. The match will not be live streamed, but live stats are
available here.
