Montgomery, Ala. - The College of Coastal Georgia women's volleyball team dropped a tough 3-2 match to Bethel Friday evening in its final pool match at the 2016 Southern States Athletic Conference Volleyball Championship.
Despite the loss, the Mariners (26-8) advanced to the tournament semifinals with a 2-1 record in its three pool matches. Coastal Georgia is the No. 2 seed from its pool behind Bethel and now will play Mobile in Saturday's semifinals. The Rams finished 3-0 and are the top seed from the other pool.
Bethel (28-5) will play Faulkner, the No. 2 seed from the other pool, in Saturday's other semifinal match. The semifinal winners will meet Saturday afternoon for the tournament championship.
Mobile is already assured of a NAIA national tournament berth after tying for the regular-season conference championship with Bethel before winning the tiebreaker to get the automatic berth to nationals that goes to the regular-season conference champion.
The tournament winner also gets an automatic berth to nationals, thus the Mariners must defeat Mobile and Bethel to claim their third straight SSAC tournament crown and the other guaranteed berth to the national championship tourney.
Coastal Georgia and Mobile split their matches during the regular season with both teams winning 3-0 on their home floor.
The Mariners have now lost three matches to Bethel including the two regular-season matchups which were 3-0 triumphs by the Wildcats.
Friday's contest was a fight to the finish as the first three sets were decided by 25-19 scores with Bethel winning the first and third sets. Coastal Georgia took the second set before controlling the fourth set and winning 25-15 to force the decisive stanza.
Playing to 15, the teams were tied at 12-12 before Bethel reeled off the final three points to claim the win on a pair of kills by SSAC Player of the Year Eloisa Sales and a hitting error by the Mariners. Coastal Georgia never trailed in the final set until Bethel grabbed the 13-12 lead on the first Sales' kill.
For the match, Sales racked up 34 of the Wildcats' 62 kills. She took 84 of the team's 182 attacks over the final sets, finishing with nine errors and hitting a respectable .298 for the contest.
No other Bethel player reached double-figures for kills.
The Mariners had four players notch twin-figure kill totals including Rachel Amundson (14), Allie Shannon (14), Kayla Gadberry (13) and Kyra White (12).
Cayley Meiners registered 47 asists as the Mariners finished with 61 kills and 23 errors in 181 chances to hit .210 for the match. Bethel hit .187.
Alyssa Keeve led the Coastal Georgia back-row players with 18 digs, Hannah Mitchell followed with 16 and Gadberry recorded 13.
Coastal Georgia finished with seven total blocks to six by the Wildcats.
