USU volleyball falls at home to New Mexico in straight sets

Utah State volleyball head coach Grayson DuBose came into Thursday’s home match against New Mexico needing just one more victory to capture his 100th conference win.

He left the Wayne Estes Center still one victory shy after a dispiriting 3-0 loss.

“We did not perform or execute anything close to what we have traditionally done,” DuBose said after the match. “We got rolled like a drunk guy in an alley.”

The visiting Lobos took an early lead in each set, forcing the Aggies to play catch-up all night long.

“We gave up a lot of points in times where we shouldn’t have,” said junior middle blocker Lauren O’Brien. “That kind of hurt us.”

Senior Rachel Gale-Hammond jumps to spike the ball against New Mexico Lobos on Thursday October 26, 2017. Utah State Aggies fell short to the Lobos, 3-0. (Sydney Oliver)

The Aggies scored 19, 21 and 13 points, respectively, in the three sets, struggling to score past New Mexico’s strong defense.

“They had really good defense, and that was hard for us cause we couldn’t put balls away,” O’Brien said. “If we can get a kill then we get excited, and we just couldn’t do that.”

O’Brien recorded six kills and just two errors while hitting .400 in the match. Senior outside Rachel Gale-Hammond paced the Aggies with eight kills. As a team, Utah State registered 23 errors and just 24 kills on a .009 shooting percentage.

Sophomore outside Lauren Twitty paced the Lobos with 11 kills.

Thursday’s loss dropped USU to 12-11 on the season and 4-7 in conference play. The Aggies will return to the Estes Center on Saturday at noon to face UNLV.