Big Sky Tournament Central
Big Sky Conference standings

CEDAR CITY, Utah -- Sloan Lovett had 17 kills and a season-high .441 hitting percentage and Morgan Stanley added 12 kills and a season-best .579 hitting percentage as Sacramento State closed the regular season with a three-set sweep (25-10, 25-22, 25-15) of Southern Utah on Saturday evening at Centrum Arena.

The Hornets, who improved to 25-6 overall and 12-4 in the Big Sky Conference, will now turn their attention to the conference tournament which begins on Thursday. The three-day, eight-team, single elimination tournament will run from Thursday through Saturday in Flagstaff, Ariz. Northern Arizona earned the right to host the tournament by winning the league's regular season championship.

Four matches will take place on Thursday in the quarterfinal round and Sacramento State will get the No. 4 seed and play No. 5 Northern Colorado at 3:30 p.m. PST. Should the Hornets win that match, they would play on Friday in the semifinals at 6 p.m. PST against the winner of the No. 1 Northern Arizona-No. 8 Southern Utah quarterfinal. The championship match is set for Saturday at 6 p.m. PST. The winner of the championship receives an automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament, a place the Hornets have not been since 2007.

The South Division champion Northern Arizona gets the No. 1 seed while the North Division champion Idaho (10-6) gets the No. 2 seed despite having a worse record than the Hornets. Idaho State (13-3) gets the No. 3 seed, followed by No. 4 Sacramento State (12-4), No. 5 Northern Colorado (10-6), No. 6 Eastern Washington (9-7), No. 7 North Dakota (9-7) and No. 8 Southern Utah (6-10).

The Hornets enter the tournament as winners of nine of their last 10 matches with the only loss during that stretch coming at Northern Arizona (3-1) two days ago. In their only matchup of the season, Sacramento State beat Northern Colorado at home in four sets.

Tonight's match lasted just one hour and 20 minutes as Sacramento State was never really threatened. The Hornets jumped out a 9-0 lead in the first set, used an 8-0 run to take control of the second set, and closed the third frame on an 18-7 run. Southern Utah's largest lead of the evening was 15-12 in the second set.

The Hornets hit .297 with 42 kills and just nine errors in 111 total attacks while the Thunderbirds (15-14, 6-10) were limited to a .092 hitting percentage. Despite the match lasting just three sets, Sacramento State also had 57 digs and 11.0 team blocks compared to just 48 digs and 5.5 team blocks for Southern Utah.

Lovett averaged 5.7 kills per set during the match, tallying 17 kills with just two errors in 34 attacks. Her .441 hitting percentage surpassed her previous season best of .419. She had five kills in each of the first two sets, and seven kills in nine attacks in the third set. Stanley's 12 kills accompanied a season-best .579 hitting percentage as the junior had just one error in 19 attacks while adding six digs and four blocks. Those were the only two Hornets that finished with more than six kills.

Madeline Cannon added six kills, four digs, three blocks and a .333 hitting percentage. True freshman Brie Gathright had a season-best eight blocks, including four in the first set, to go along with three kills and a .333 hitting percentage. Libero Lexie Skalbeck had 21 digs (seven more than any other player on the floor) and setter Kennedy Kurtz finished with 38 assists, seven digs and two blocks. Brigitte Murdock had a season-high 14 digs.

Senior Lauren Kissell was held to a season-low four kills, snapping a string of 19 consecutive matches with double figures in kills.

For Southern Utah, Chennin Benson led the way with nine kills and no other Thunderbird player finished with more than five kills. With the exception of Faith Ma'afala (three kills, .750), each of the other 11 Southern Utah players failed to hit anything better than .143.

Sacramento State will be making its first appearance at the Big Sky Tournament since the 2011 season. Since joining the Big Sky in 1996, the Hornets will have made 15 conference tournament appearances, and are 20-5 in postseason play with nine Big Sky Tournament championships. The last tournament title for the Hornets came in 2007, the year the team eventually reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament.