Volleyball team upsets Cougs
It sure felt good.
That was what junior Erin Graybill kept saying after Utah State’s volleyball team defeated her former team, Brigham Young University, in five games. With the win, the Ags improved to 3-7 on the season.
Graybill made it a match for her to remember, getting a career-high in kills with 13 for the night.
“When our team plays their team … it’s competitive,” Utah State Head Coach Burt Fuller said. “It’s a great victory, I’m really fired up for our kids. We needed this victory so bad.”
“That was the sweetest match of all time,” junior Ingrid Roth said. “They got up two games and we never quite ever. That was the best part of the whole match, we never quit.”
The match started out painfully for the Aggies. They led for most of game one, but gave it up in the last six points, two of which were service aces.
Fuller said that after that first loss, the team talked about playing harder and getting on the floor more after balls.
“It was disappointing to lose that first game,” Fuller said.
Fuller said that after the come-from-behind rally by BYU in the first game that he thought the Cougars got comfortable and thought they could breeze through the rest of the match.
“They just kind of hooked up,” Fuller said. “We didn’t blast them after game one. We didn’t blast them after game two.”
The Ags changed their strategy around for the third game. Fuller said the team made some adjustments to get around the blocks which included making better choices and not hitting straight into the middle every time. He said they had to move the ball around.
“I wasn’t hitting so well in the first couple games,” Graybill said. “I was glad that [Dominique Arsenault] kept going to our middles even though our numbers were low in the beginning. I think it help us out a lot.”
“We knew we weren’t ready for it, right off,” Roth said. “But we made really good adjustments down the stretch.”
The tide turned for the Aggies in game three. Graybill was able to find her way around the blocks for five kills while Zuzana was also able to tally five kills. During game four, the team was down 16-18 but had a 7-0 run that put USU up 23-14.
“It was a team effort and everybody helped out in different areas,” Fuller said of the last three games.
USU was able to get the win in game four to head into game five. At first, it looked like the Aggies were not going to get the match, falling to 5-1 early on. However, the Ags were able to pull out the win.
Utah State had five players with kills in the double-digits. Zuzana Cernianska led the way with 15. Roth and Graybill each had 14 while Carolyn Forbush and Amanda Orgill had 11 and 10, respectively.
As a team, the Aggies had fewer unforced hitting errors than BYU. Fuller said he believed that was the first time that had happened all season. Besides unforced hitting errors, the Aggies had less of everything than the Cougars.
“The games that we won,” Fuller said, “we out-hit them. They won most of the box stuff, but we won the final game and that’s the key right there.”
The Aggies head on the road to California the weekend to take on Long Beach State Friday and UC Irvine Saturday.
“It will be tough for us to repeat this performance,” Fuller said. “Long Beach is very good, very tough at home. Irvine is very good. We’re focusing on getting better on our side.”
-aedmunds@cc.usu.edu