RAPID CITY, S.D. --- The South Dakota School of Mines women's volleyball team seemed to run out of steam Tuesday night as the Black Hills State Yellow Jackets defeated the Hardrockers, 3-1, at Goodell Gymnasium in Rapid City, S.D., during a Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference match.

After Black Hills State won the two first sets in a competitive back-and-forth battle, SD Mines came out of the intermission with an impressive, and dominating, third game only to fall short in the fourth frame that allowed BHSU to steal the win.

"For the most part, we didn't handle the situation very well," said Hardrocker volleyball head coach Doug Tabbert. "We played tight and anything-but-relaxed for the majority of the match. In some cases we tried to do too much and in other cases we were kind of passive. Neither worked out very well. It was just the opposite of how we played the majority of time this past weekend. The third set was what we are looking for—we played like a confident and relaxed team and the results reflected that. Unfortunately, we struggled to be that way early and late in the match."

Black Hills State defeated SD Mines, 25-23, 25-20, 14-25, 25-17.  The Hardrockers collected 44 kills in the match and was 112-of 136 on the attack. The Hardrockers tallied 41 assists, 70 digs and had 10 total blocks. The Yellow Jackets came away with 43 kills and was 125-148 while collecting 40 assists, 57 digs and eight total blocks.

It is such an emotional situation since it is a rivalry match. It is a very big deal to both teams," Tabbert said. "Part of the maturation process for a young team is learning how to perform in matches with such importance placed on the outcome. We need to learn how to better handle ourselves in such situations.  The only way you truly learn how to do that is to play in similar  situations in the future and have more success. We can look forward to doing that and learning how to function better as we move forward."

Individually, freshman Kenzie Devries had an outstanding game going 21-25 with 14 kills. Junior Emily Newton also had a good outing with 10 kills and was 18-19 on the attack and four blocks. Freshman Caryn Hazzard contributed with seven kills and sophomore Anna Breidt and freshman Anna Breidt both notched five.

Sophomore Elizabeth Jensen paced the Hardrockers with 34 of the team's 41 assists and posted 12 digs as well. Freshman Makinze Maiden led SD Mines with 16 digs while freshman Allie Brown had 15 digs.

"BHSU deserves credit for how they defended. We knew that they would make it tough to get kills and they did. They also challenged our serve receive in some rotations and we expected that," Tabbert said. "Neither team was tremendous offensively and I'm sure we were both looking for more offensive production."

The loss drops SD Mins to 1-26 on the season and 0-16 in the conference and will close out the season Saturday night as the Hardrockers play host to University of Colorado Colorado Springs in a 7 p.m. match at the King Center in Rapid City.