Ags win in five over ‘Cats
Utah State played their first five-game match of the season Tuesday night – a 3-2 win at Weber State.
But for the Aggies, it was a lot like practice.
“In practice we do this thing called fifth game, where if you make two hitting errors or you miss a serve, the game’s over,” Aggie Head Coach Grayson DuBose said. “So that really puts some stress on them to make sure they don’t do that stuff. We just talked about it in (the locker room), we said that was just like practice.”
A missed serve by junior Melissa Osterloh would have cost Utah State their practice game, but the Aggies won the real Game 5, 15-8, to bump their current winning streak to three matches.
But Game 5 was probably the last thing on the Aggies’ minds going into Game 3.
After all, the Wildcats hadn’t even lead at any point in the first two games, and were hitting .027 as a team. And the Aggies won Game 1 handily, 30-19, and took game two in similar fashion, 30-24.
“We probably thought, ‘We can do this in three.’ And you can never think that,” senior opposite hitter Amanda Nielson said. “They’re a scrappy team, and they came back on us. So you’ve just got to be careful.”
In a back-and-forth game three that was dominated by seven USU errors, the momentum shifted Weber’s way. Despite a late Utah State run, led by strong hitting from Nielson – who was one shy of a season-high with 31 kills on the night – the Aggies lost 30-27.
The fourth game was more of a kill-fest, with each team reaching the 20-kill mark.
USU’s first 13 points of the game came off kills. Nielson added another 10 to her tally, which would have tied the four-game kills records at 29 had the Aggies won, and led Utah State to a 22-kill game, while hitting .292 as a team.
But it was the Wildcats’ hitting that was the real story. They pulled out of a mini-hitting slump to the tune of a .388 average, with 20 kills and only one error. Those stats propelled them to a two-point, 30-28 win.
DuBose said some of Weber’s hitting success can be attributed to the Aggies’ blocking, even though USU out-blocked Weber 10-7 on the night.
“We let them hit too well,” he said. “… Our block wasn’t as sharp as it has been in the past.”
Where the blocking lacked, Utah State’s hitting excelled.
The Aggies finished the game with 71 kills and a .222 hitting average. Nielson led the team in kills, and hit .284, but USU had three players with double-digit kill totals. Osterloh had 11 and sophomore middle blocker Danielle Taylor had 10. Senior Monarisa Ale and junior middle blocker Rebecca Anderson were close, with nine.
Anderson’s effort tied her season high for kills, and she hit a team-best .529.
“Personally, I just connected really well with (USU setter) Chelsea (Fowles) tonight,” Anderson said. “I think she was just on. I think she’s an amazing setter, and she gets us the balls we need and we just go up and swing.”
Fowles, a freshman, ended the night with 59 assists, four short of her season high set at Fresno State earlier in the season.
Nielson and Osterloh also recorded career highs with 22 digs a piece.
But Tuesday’s five-game match yielded more than statistics.
DuBose said it gives the Aggies some momentum for their next two games – both home matches against Utah Valley on Thursday and Fresno State on Saturday.
“We’re on this nice three-match winning streak now, and we’ve played some good teams, and we’re playing pretty good volleyball,” he said.
Nielson also sees the fifth game as an experience the Aggies could benefit from later.
“We haven’t gone five games so maybe we needed it,” she said.
“This mentally prepared us for what to expect if we end up going five games with a conference team, then we’ll know what to expect and be prepared,” Anderson said.
-da.bake@aggiemail.usu.edu