Volleyball drops another game to Pacific
In what has become a trend for the Utah State women’s volleyball team, it once again dropped a hard-fought match to a conference opponent Saturday at the Spectrum to the Pacific Tigers (4-3) in five games.
“We played well,” said Utah State Head Coach Burt Fuller, “but we played young. We need to grow up.”
This would have been an important win for the Aggies (1-6). Last year Pacific took their spot in the conference tournament. The Aggies split the series with the Tigers, falling in three games in Stockton, Calif., then defeating the Tigers at home in four games later in the seasons.
“We played pretty well,” said outside hitter Carolyn Forbush, “we just weren’t good enough.”
Forbush led the way for the Aggies with 18 kills and 17 digs. However, Kindy Peterson and Zuzana Cernianska didn’t have as strong a showing as they did against Cal State Northridge. Thursday. Cernianska tallied 14 kills, 27 assists, along with 15 digs. Peterson had 10 kills with 11 digs.
“It’s like a piston engine out there,” Fuller said. “One of your pistons is up firing and the other one is down below just taking in gas. We have to be firing together. We have that ability. Kindy obviously has that ability, she showed that the other night with a tremendous match. Carolyn has the ability, she showed it with this match. We need them both at the same time.”
The Tigers had 21 blocks in the match, 10 blocks in the first game alone, something that Aggies had trouble hitting around. Junior Sidney Bennett had 15 of those, tying a school record for the most blocks. Utah State had nine blocks for the match.
“They have good size,” Fuller said. “We didn’t pass as well as we did the other night [and] when you don’t pass well the blocks are going to get on you. Our goal was to not make so many unforced hitting errors as we did the other night, and we didn’t.”
Both the Tigers and the Aggies had 21 unforced hitting errors.
Fuller added that one thing his team needs to work on is going after the ball better and covering the net better. He said that there were a number of balls that he thought were coverable that the Ags didn’t get.
“We didn’t block smart,” he said. “We made wrong choices. Our setters were hesitant going after the ball. We had some passing breakdowns that they exploited.”
In the first game the Aggies came out on fire and quickly built up an 8-3 lead. But the Tigers answered back and went on a 5-0 run to tie the game at eight. From there on, the game was pretty even but UOP was able to pull away at the end and win 30-23.
The second game was a strong one for USU, as it has been in previous matches. The Aggies came out a little slow at the beginning, but had an 8-0 run toward the middle of the match to give them the lead at 22-18. From there out the Aggies dominated and they won the game 30-25.
Games three and four were much like the first game, both teams were evenly matched, but the Aggies were always just one step behind the Tigers, falling 30-23 in game three. In the fourth game, USU once again jumped out to an early 8-1 lead, but this time it held onto it and took the match to five games with another 30-25 victory.
Pacific dominated the fifth game, hardly giving the Aggies a chance rattling off 5 quick points for the early lead. From there out, the Aggies were never closer than five, falling 15-10.
“It comes back to a kind of maturity thing maybe,” Fuller said. “We had the energy, we were excited but that karma of that fifth game with young players sometimes makes a huge difference.”
The Ags’ next game is against Idaho on Thursday in Mocow, Idaho.
“I think that if we all just come out and play as hard as we can, we’ll do fine,” Forbush said.
-aedmunds@cc.usu.edu