Box Score

Photo Gallery (images by Austin McKeon)

San Francisco, CA -- The Urban Knights were undefeated on their home court this year, winning six straight sets so far in 2011. That streak ended Monday night. In the first of a two-match series against PacWest foe Dixie State, the Urban Knights simply looked shell-shocked after dropping the first two sets, and although they won a hard-fought third set, eventually succumbed to the Red Storm 3-1 (16-25, 10-25, 25-21, 16-25).

Academy of Art (5-8, 2-1 PWC) was plagued by errors all night as Dixie State posted multiple scoring runs. It was early on in the first set that the Knights looked out of sync. A kill by Mykal Vailu'u put the Knights up 4-1, but back-to-back aces topped off an eight-point run by Dixie State (7-6, 2-3 PWC) to take the wind out of the ART U sails. After that, the Knights strung together a three-point run, but the Red Storm went on to win 25-16.

The second set started off ominously for the Urban Knights, when the usually steady Kawai Oleole had a service error to give the Storm a 1-0 lead right off the bat. Academy of Art wasn't able to put up consecutive points until the very end of the match, and at one point had five straight attack errors to put the Red Storm up 13-3.

The third was much more typical of the Urban Knights that fans have seen so far this year. The Red Storm were on their heels for a majority of the set, scrambling around the floor as ART U scattered kills in between the Dixie players. Angela Heath had five of her 10 kills for the match in the third set, and the Knights staved off elimination with a 25-21 game win. 

Dixie State just couldn't be stopped as the fourth set came around, putting together runs of five, four, and four points to put the Knights away for good. The Red Storm were led by Brita Jensen (13 kills, 7 kills) and Morgan Hill (11 kills, 1 dig). Setter Jen Hardman had 41 assists, and Jen Hardman had 16 digs. ART U got a double-double from Leinani Keanini (10 kills, 12 digs), and got 12 kills and 6 digs from Vailu'u. 

The Knights dropped out of first place for the first time since PacWest play started two weeks ago. They'll have a chance to vindicate Monday's loss 24 hours after it happened, taking on Dixie State again on Tuesday night at 7:00 PM. After the two-game series against the Red Storm, the Knights will have a similar two-game swing with Cal Baptist on Friday and Saturday.