Cal Poly captures Big West regular season title in women’s volleyball
DAVIS, Calif. - With a massive must-win match for the Mustangs and a Hawai'i loss to UC Irvine, Cal Poly (21-8, 14-4 BWC) not only clinched the #1 seed for the Big West Championships but also its first Big West regular season title since 2018.
The first title for Caroline Walters since taking over full-time in 2019 comes in the same season the revered head coach reached 100 career wins. Cal Poly ends the regular season as the only Big West team with 20+ overall wins in 2024, and this also marks the third straight campaign in which the Mustangs have earned 14 conference wins.
For the second straight match, Cal Poly enjoyed multiple double-digit efforts for both kills and digs. Tommi Stockham (15 kills), Chloe Leluge (13), and Breklyn Pulling (12) accounted for 75% of the 53 kills the Mustangs tallied while Leluge also collected eight total blocks to set a new single-game career high and also match Pulling's season-high mark.
Emme Bullis was massively important yet again in enabling Cal Poly's high offensive output, supplying 45 set assists to secure her spot as the Big West's second-leading setter this season, statistically. While Bullis remained high in the conference list, Stockham's 3.66 kills per set is also second and Leluge's .372 hitting kept her as the conference leader as a true freshman.
Once again, defensive duo Elif Hurriyet (17 digs) and London Haberfield (11) put in outstanding work alongside Lizzy Markovska's second consecutive match in which she tallied 13 digs. The Mustangs collected 12 total blocks as a team and 62 digs, holding one of the Big West's deadliest offenses to .201 hitting while helping force Davis to commit 26 errors.
It was a tale of two teams throughout the five-set affair on Saturday afternoon, with each set win relatively easily going to the team that performed far better. The definitive set wins were characterized by long runs of dominance from one side or the other.
For the most part, Cal Poly enjoyed an early lead in the first set with a handful of times being one and two-point gaps. UC Davis finishing with a .314 hitting percentage became the story of the frame as the Aggies enjoyed a five-point run that put them up 11-8 after being down 6-8. Davis never fully relinquished the lead through the remainder of the first set, taking it 25-22.
The second set was all Cal Poly from the start, jumping out to a 9-5 lead before the Aggies could find success. UC Davis pulled the score back to an 11-11 tie, but the Mustangs answered quickly and decisively with a run that put them up to 19-15. Despite another small push from Davis, Cal Poly rescued a 25-19 set win, tying the match.
Similar to the first pair of sets, the next two nearly mirrored them. UC Davis pivoted from a tough second set to jump out to an early lead in the third, with the peak of the gap being seven points at a few different moments. A 6-1 Cal Poly run through the middle of the set brought the Mustangs within two points of the Davis lead, but they could not overturn it completely and fell 25-20.
Despite the match seemingly swinging momentum towards the home side, the Mustangs had different ideas and blazed out of the break to a 13-6 lead. The Aggies never came within six points of the Cal Poly lead again as the Mustangs won the set 25-17 and carried that pace into a nail-biting fifth set.
In their second tiebreaker of the week, Cal Poly took full control from the onset with a dominant 6-0 start that forced the Aggies to burn both of their timeouts early. Davis could not string together consecutive points as Cal Poly ran away with the 15-7 set and match win.
The Big West Championship at UC Irvine's Bren Events Center first round takes place on Wednesday, Nov. 27 where the #4/5 and #3/6 seeds will play each other before moving onto the semifinals where Cal Poly awaits at the #1 seed. The Mustangs will face the winner of the #4/5 seed match on Friday, Nov. 29 before the Finals take place on Saturday.
(Article courtesy of Cal Poly Athletics)
