The Huskies fought off no fewer than 14 match points to defeat the Ducks, 26-24, 16-25, 21-25, 32-30, 25-23. Keeping in mind that fifth games are to 15 points, we see how deeply into overtime the decisive set went. Two of the match points were in Game 4 and 12 were in Game 5. As the linked article notes, "Making the run all the more impressive was that it came without UW's offensive leader, sophomore Krista Vansant, who landed awkwardly and suffered what appears to be a sprained ankle early in the fourth set, and did not return to the match."
Several players were able to maintain hitting percentages of .300 or better over a large number of attempts (box score). For Oregon, they included Liz Brenner (.410; 22 kills and 6 errors on 39 attempts) and Alaina Bergsma (.302; 31-12-63). For Washington, they included Cassie Strickland (.394; 14-1-33), Kylin Munoz (.342; 17-4-38), and Gabbi Parker (.308; 9-1-26).
A Husky forte all season has been the block and last night's match was no exception, with U-Dub exceeding Oregon in total team blocks, 19-6. The Ducks dominated digging, however, 83-54.
***
Down in Los Angeles, USC handed Stanford its first conference loss, 25-19, 25-20, 27-29, 25-22, on Thursday night. The Trojans then followed up on Friday with a five-set victory over Cal, 23-25, 25-21, 18-25, 29-27, 15-11.
As the above-linked game article from the Cardinal-Trojan match-up points out, "Neither team would let the ball drop as USC recorded a season-high 112 digs and Stanford had 117. Junior libero Natalie Hagglund had the most impressive night of all as she etched her name into the Trojan record books with a career-high 44 digs."
Based on the Stanford-USC box score, I created the following pie-chart (on which you may click to enlarge) to show what happened to each of Stanford's 203 spike attempts on the evening.
What we see is that the Trojans dug up 55.2% of Stanford's total spike attempts (112/203), and 62.6% of the Cardinal's non-error attacks (112/179). The metric of non-error attacks is useful because the defense cannot be expected to dig opposing spike attempts that are blocked at the net or hit out-of-bounds. Not surprisingly given the above data, Stanford had a poor night in terms of hitting percentage, registering a .187. (The figure in the pie-chart of 17 balls hit out-of-bounds by the Cardinal comes from subtracting the 7 USC blocks from Stanford's total of 24 hitting errors; miscellaneous would include balls blocked back over the net by USC that Stanford was able to keep in play, for example.)
USC's digging two nights ago against Stanford represents a big improvement over some early-season matches. As I wrote about in this late-September posting, the Trojans had dug only 37% of Oregon's non-error attacks and 46% of UCLA's in a pair of key matches at that point in the season. In the first USC-Stanford match of the season (October 10), a 3-0 Cardinal sweep, the Trojans dug only 43% of Stanford's non-error attacks (39/[100-9]).
USC's main offensive weapon, frosh outside hitter Samantha Bricio, also improved her performance from the first (-.043; 10-12-47) to the second (.226; 19-5-62) Stanford match. Also, in the second match, Trojan middle blockers Alicia Ogoms (.471; 8-0-17) and Alexis Olgard (.444; 12-0-27) came through with big hitting nights.
***
Stanford rebounded to defeat UCLA in four games (25-22, 25-18, 15-25, 27-25) Friday night, as the renovated Pauley Pavilion was opened for volleyball. The Cardinal received strong hitting performances from Inky Ajanaku (.412; 10-3-17), Rachel Williams (.400; 16-4-30), and Carly Wopat (.346; 11-2-26). One-half of UCLA's outside-hitting duo, Rachael Kidder, hit well (.362; 21-4-47), but the other half, Tabi Love, had a tough night (.038; 10-8-52).
No comments:
Post a Comment