SALEM, Ore. – Pacific Lutheran volleyball completed its regular season schedule on Friday night with a sweep of Willamette. The Lutes defeated the Bearcats by scores of 25-20, 25-18 and 25-21, improving their conference record to 14-2, 21-4 overall.

The victory on Friday clinched at least a share of the Northwest Conference title for PLU. Unless Whitworth loses its match on Saturday night to Lewis & Clark, the Lutes and Pirates will finish tied for first place in the conference. With the season tiebreaker in Whitworth's favor five sets to three, the Pirates would receive the automatic bid to the NCAA Div. III regional tournament while the Lutes would wait out an at-large bid to be announced during the 2014 Div. III Championship selection show on Monday, Nov. 11 at 11 a.m. EST.

"Winning the conference championship is always a hard thing to do," head coach Kevin Aoki said. "We are blessed with super student-athletes that are willing to play together as a team. It's nice to win, but also have fun in the process which makes it so much sweeter."

In Friday's contest, Lucy Capron hit .351 with a season-high 17 kills in a three-set match. Kylai Cooley added 10 kills while Amy Wooten tallied eight and Ariana Judson finished with six. Samantha North guided the Lutes with 36 assists and libero Amber Aguiar added 17 digs to her season total.

In the first set, Willamette took a 15-11 lead to which PLU responded by scoring 10 of the next 11 points to jump ahead 21-16. The Lutes held on to finish 25-20.

The Lutes began the second set by scoring 11 of the first 14 points. The Bearcats were unable to recover, dropping the set 18-25.

Although Willamette scored the first point in the third set, PLU eventually jumped ahead 15-12. Willamette pushed back to score five of the next six to regain the lead at 17-16 before the Lutes put away nine of the final 13 points to secure the 25-21 set victory and complete the sweep.