VERMILLION, S.D. – Omaha made history with its first 20-win season and conference championship at the Division I level this fall. Its first NCAA D-I tournament berth, however, will have to come another day.
The top-seeded Mavericks (20-10) fell to South Dakota (20-9) 25-23, 30-28, 25-16 in the Summit League tournament final Saturday at the Sanford Coyote Sports Center. The second-seeded Coyotes overcame a six-point deficit in the first set & fought off four set points to the second en route to the tourney title.
Omaha used a balanced attack – it had six different players record a kill in its first nine points – to build an 18-12 advantage in the opening set only to have USD reel off six of the final seven points to claim it.
The Mavericks were up 24-22 in the second before two-time tournament MVP Elizabeth Juhnke tallied two of her match-high 24 kills consecutively. Each team had two sets points immediately after, then Juhnke sent a ball to the floor with her team up 29-28 that was originally ruled out by a line judge.
South Dakota challenged the call, and it was reversed following a video review. That put the Coyotes up 2-0 in the match. They scored the first five points of the final set and pulled away to finish the match.
All-Tournament selections Sadie Limback and Marriah Buss paced the Mavericks with 13 and 11 kills, respectively. USD, which also got 15 kills from Sami Slaughter, outhit Omaha .372 to .195 on the day.
The Mavericks became the fourth straight regular-season Summit champion to fall in the tournament.
This was Omaha’s third appearance in a Summit League title match since it transitioned to Division I, but it was the first time the Mavericks played in the final as the higher seed. Omaha lost a five-set thriller at Denver in 2015 as the No. 3 seed. It then fell to the Pioneers again in Denver as the fourth seed in 2019.
The Mavericks split their regular-season meetings with the Coyotes, with each winning on the other’s home court. Omaha beat South Dakota here 13 days ago, taking three straight sets after losing the first.
It had the opportunity to pull off the same feat in the tourney final after falling behind by a game. But the Mavericks never seemed to recover, emotionally, from the overturned call to end the second set. They trailed by as many as 10 in the final one as they struggled to string together points to get back in it.
