University of Montana senior Whitney Hobbs was named the final Big Sky Conference Player of the Week for the 2009 regular season the league office announced Monday. Hobbs was recognized for her role in the Grizzlies’ road sweep of Weber State and Idaho State last weekend that clinched Montana’s spot in the upcoming Big Sky tournament.

It was the second time Hobbs has been honored by the Big Sky Conference this season and the third time in seven weeks that a Montana player has been singled out. Jaimie Thibeault was honored Oct. 12; Hobbs was recognized a week later on Oct. 19.

This marks the first time since 1994 that Montana has had at least three POWs in a single season.

Needing one win in two matches last weekend to secure the final tournament spot, Hobbs and the Grizzlies took any drama out of the weekend with a 3-1 victory at Weber State Friday night, 27-29, 25-22, 25-12, 25-23.

Hobbs had 15 kills in the match on .324 hitting and added a career-high six blocks.

With a tournament spot secure, Hobbs and Montana fell behind early at Idaho State Saturday night, dropping the first two set 25-16, 25-14. The Grizzlies rallied back to take the final three sets, 25-22, 26-24, 21-19.

Hobbs had 18 kills on .244 hitting, nine digs, five blocks and a pair of service aces.

For the weekend Hobbs averaged 3.67 kills on .278 hitting, 1.44 digs and 1.22 blocks per set as Montana swept the WSU-ISU road trip for the third time in the last four years.

“Last weekend was an extremely important set of matches for this team,” UM coach Jerry Wagner said. “We really needed to finish the regular season strong heading into the conference tournament. As I said after the weekend, our main cast of characters has really been stringing along a lot of good performances, and Whitney is one of those.

“Any time you’re honored as a player of the week, you tip your hat to your teammates for putting you in that position. But then you also deserve a lot of credit for coming through for your team.”

Montana (14-13, 10-6 BSC), which earned the tournament’s No. 4 seed, will play top seed Portland State (20-7, 14-2 BSC) Friday at 6 p.m. (MT) in Cheney, Wash., in the first of two semifinal matches.

No. 2 Eastern Washington (18-10, 12-4 BSC) will play No. 3 Northern Colorado (19-11, 12-4 BSC) in Friday’s second semifinal, with the semifinal winners meeting in Saturday night’s championship match.