PORTLAND, Ore. — These were the droids we were looking for.
 
The Portland State volleyball team looked like its old self Thursday night, rolling to a 3-0 sweep (25-9, 25-15, 25-15) of Idaho in only 65 minutes. The Vikings hit a season-best .471, their best hitting percentage in a match since 2013. Makayla Lewis hit .478 while recording a match-high 13 kills. Parker Webb and Ashlyn Blotzer added 12 kills each while both players set new career highs for hitting percentage at .750 and .588, respectively.
 
It's exactly how the Vikings (15-10, 10-4 Big Sky) looked during their seven-match winning streak from Oct. 1-27. Gone was the team that had lost three straight matches coming into Thursday night.
 
"It felt good to just get more rhythm in our offense and connect with our hitters really well," Portland State head coach Michael Seemann said after the match. "We did a good job of serving really well tonight, which gave us a lot of offensive opportunities."
 
The connection between the offense allowed the Vikings to go on multiple extended runs against the Vandals (4-21, 1-12 Big Sky). The Vikings scored 14 straight points at one point in the first set, 11 of 13 points in the second set, and seven straight points in the third set.
 
Tough serving helped fuel all of the Vikings' runs. Sophia Meyers served during the Vikings' 14-0 run in the first set that turned a competitive, 10-8 set into a runaway. Meyers had three aces during the run, while her serves set up three kills each for Webb and Ashleigh Barto, and two kills for Lewis.
 
Meyers was the one serving again when the Vikings went on a 6-0 run in the second set that flipped a 10-7 deficit into a 13-10 lead they would not relinquish.
 
"[Sophia] served almost a set's worth of points [Laughs; she had 23 serves, in fact], but no, she's striking the ball really well from the end line. And that makes a team that's probably a little bit inexperienced [in Idaho] a little easier to defend. But no, I thought we served really well and we normally do in our home gym. So, it felt good to get that back as well," Seemann said of Meyers and the team's serving.
 
Madison Friebel capped the second set with back-to-back aces of her own, while Webb added another ace early in the third set.
 
The quality serving helped set up a Viking offense that outhit the Vandals .471-to-.063. Not only was the .471 hitting a season high for the Vikings, the .063 mark for the Vandals set a new season low for a Viking opponent. All three opponents during the Vikings' three-match losing streak coming into Thursday had hit over .200 against the Vikings. But the Vikings had held 13 of 14 opponents before their three-match skid to under .200 hitting, so Thursday's performance against the Vandals was more a return to the status quo than an anomaly.
 
The defense was at its best in the first set, when the Vikings held the Vandals to only five kills on negative-.040 hitting. The Vandals finished with only nine points in the opening frame, the first time the Vikings had held an opponent to single digits since holding the University of Portland to only seven points in the fourth set on Sept. 9, 2021.
 
The Vikings' best offensive set came in the second when they recorded 18 kills on .516 hitting. It was the first time the Vikings had hit over .500 in a set since the first set of their match against Weber State on Oct. 15, when they hit .562.
 
Blotzer had her best set in the second, when she recorded six of her 12 kills on only seven swings. Webb also had four kills on only four swings in the second set, giving her a perfect 1.000 hitting percentage in the frame.
 
Lewis led the way in the third set, recording six kills on only seven swings before being subbed out once the Vikings got into the 20s. Webb had four kills on only five swings in the third set, while Blotzer added four kills as well.
 
All told, Friebel finished with 37 assists while orchestrating the Vikings' resurgence on offense. Friebel was also one of four Vikings to tie for the team lead with eight digs. Lewis, Meyers and libero Ellie Snook – who added seven assists to her stat sheet Thursday – were the other three.
 
The hope for the Vikings now is that their return to form will go beyond Thursday night. The Vikings close out their home schedule Saturday against Eastern Washington, before concluding the regular season the following Friday at Sacramento State. From there, the Big Sky tournament comes over Thanksgiving weekend when the Vikings will look to play their way to an NCAA tournament berth.
 
"We've got to take [tonight's win] and run and understand that if we're firing on all cylinders like that, then we're a very balanced team offensively," Seemann said. "That's kind of what we were doing during our run [in October] and I think the teams that we saw recently did a good job of shutting that down. We lost a little bit of our rhythm, but we found it back tonight. That's going to help us a lot moving forward."
 
So, Thursday night's win marked the first step. The next step comes Saturday against the Eagles.
 
Match Notes: The Vikings improved to 19-9 all time against the Vandals with Thursday's win…The Vikings are now 15-2 when they hold opponents to less than .200 hitting while they're 0-8 when opponents hit above .200…Webb's .750 hitting percentage was very nearly one of the three-best in program history in a three-set match. The three-best performances for hitting percentage are .818 by Jessica Brodie vs. Centenary on Sept. 16, 2005; .812 by Aubrey Mitchell vs. Weber State on Nov. 15, 2012; and .789 by Erica Jepsen at Eastern Washington on Nov. 10, 2007.