CHENEY, Wash. — The Portland State volleyball team appeared snakebitten while closing out its regular season with a 3-0 (26-24, 25-19, 25-22) loss to Eastern Washington Friday.
 
Already without leading attacker Alivia Eikenberg, the Vikings (11-16, 7-9) lost starting middle blocker Reese Biesemeyer early in the second set. Without those two, the Vikings couldn't muster enough against an Eagle team that snapped a 16-match losing streak with its win over the Vikings.
 
The Eagles (3-25, 1-15) hit a season-high .245 against the Vikings, while out-acing Portland State 7-to-1. The Vikings also committed 11 service errors, six of which came in a close first-set loss that put the Vikings in a hole early.
 
The Vikings nearly pulled off a comeback in the first set. The Eagles led 16-11 midway through at which point they were hitting .438 with seven kills on 16 swings and no attack errors.
 
A 4-0 run later in the set put the Vikings in front, 22-20. But two late service errors, including one to give the Eagles set point at 25-24, proved costly, as the Eagles claimed the opener, 26-24. It was the fourth straight loss for the Vikings in a set that went into extra points, dropping the Vikings to 7-11 in such sets this season.
 
The Vikings tried to bounce back in the second set. They led 8-2 out of the gates and 14-9 later in the set. But the Eagles won 11 of 12 points soon after to turn a 16-12 deficit into a 23-17 runaway and closed it out from there.
 
The Vikings then fell into an early hole in the third set that they never climbed out of to drop their fourth straight match to end the regular season.
 
Tyra Schaub led the Vikings with 13 kills on .312 hitting to go with seven digs. Freshman Ashley Repetti, starting in place of Eikenberg for the second straight match, recorded a career-high nine kills on .429 hitting. Middle blocker Naomi White contributed eight kills on .438 hitting. No other Viking had more than three kills in the match.
 
Defensively, no player went into double figures for digs, while the Vikings were out-blocked 7.0-to-2.0 at the net.
 
The Vikings now face a short turnaround ahead of the Big Sky tournament, which starts Monday with quarterfinal matches at Northern Colorado's Bank of Colorado Arena. The Vikings, who are locked into the seventh seed, will learn their opponent and match time later tonight as other conference matches finish up.
 
No matter the opponent, the Vikings will hope to right themselves in the two days they'll have off before Monday's quarterfinal.
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