Ag volletball tops Riverside
It was a record-setting night for sophomore Kelsi Thoman in Utah State’s 3-1 win over UC Riverside Thursday night at the Spectrum.
Thoman’s 10 digs in the match gave her the single season record for the most digs with 364. Last season, Taubi Neeves set the record with 362.
“I remember coming in this year and I was like ‘I’m never going to be as good as Taubi,'” Thoman said. “I just remember watching her last year, just throwing her body everywhere and I never thought I could be that kind of player. [It was] my goal to come out every game and play scrappy.”
“She’s playing a big part of our team,” Monarisa Ale said. “I think she’s doing a great job.”
Ale was also a big contributer to the win for the Aggies as well. She finished the night hitting .450 against the Highlanders with 10 kills and 10 digs.
“I think one of the big keys for us tonight was Mona,” Utah State Head Coach Burt Fuller said. “She did a great job going in for us tonight going in. I was really happy for her. Tonight was Mona’s night.”
With only four games left in the season, two at home, Fuller said that Aggies are still fighting strong, despite the fact they won’t make the Big West tournament.
“It’s a prideful win,” he said. “All these kids, with the exception of Kindy our senior, have the opportunity to come back and win. They’re young, they’re resilient. We’re not going to get to the tournament, but we can still win matches.”
“It’s pretty exciting for us to come out at the end of the season,” Thoman said. “Our season hasn’t been going that well with all the injuries and stuff and people think we’re done and we’re not going to come out with anything. We had a lot of versitility with our team.”
The Aggies started out the game on the wrong foot with enough errors to give the Highlanders the 30-23 win. It looked like the Aggies were not going to climb out of their hole, but they held on.
In game two, the Aggies held strong and took the game into overtime, pulling out a 32-30 win.
“I was thinking that was the turning point,” Fuller said. “I was thinking [when it was tied at] 29, whoever wins this game wins this match. So I was really happy we won it. It was a gutsy win, a prideful win.”
Games three and four were hardly a contest for the Ags, winning 30-14 then 30-24 for the match point.
“We didn’t have emotion [in game one],” Ale said. “In the beginning we played tight but at the end we had it.”
Fuller said the Aggies played very well against a strong defensive team and a team that can play good volleyball.
“[The Highlanders] lost in five to Pacific and Northridge last weekend,” Fuller said. “They play good volleyball. They’ve lost in five [games] probably more than any team in the country and to go out there and to beat them in four up here is a great victory for our team.”
He said the team was able to play through a lot of adversity during the game with some members fighting off illnesses and others still just trying to work hard.
“I just think that our kids have battled our adversity and our problems really well,” Fuller said. “They’ve never not played hard. We’ve got beat up on a little bit by some pretty good teams as we’ve made some changes but they’ve never given up. We could have rolled over and died after game one but we held tough in game two and realy played well in games three and four.”
However, despite the strong showing by the Aggies, Fuller knows there are still some things that the team needs to work on.
“If we’re going to continue to improve,” he said, “we have to defend five hitters, we can’t just defend the outsides.”
The Aggies’ next game is against CS Fullerton Saturday night at 7 p.m. in the Spectrum.
-aedmunds@cc.usu.edu