Arizona head coach Rita Stubbs said that her players have not complained to her about being away from home so much this year, but it’s tough to believe that a team doesn’t eventually get tired.
The Wildcats are in the midst of a stretch in September and October with 14 of their 18 matches on the road or neutral courts. They have played at home twice since the end of August. In addition to simply being overmatched by Baylor in a 3-0 (25-14, 25-17, 25-20) loss on Sunday afternoon, the travel has to be taking
its toll.
“It’s been exhausting, to be honest,” said freshman libero Gigi Whann before the team left for this week’s matches. “I think everyone knows that we’ve been super tired. I wasn’t expecting us to be gone every single weekend. I didn’t realize that, and then we were just—we just kept traveling. So I was like, oh my gosh, like this is a lot on everyone’s body, on everyone’s mind, so we really just tried to stay positive through it all.”
Arizona lost in straight sets at No. 8 TCU on Friday night, but two of the three sets were competitive. Less than 48 hours later at Baylor, nothing went right.
Baylor outhit Arizona .410 to .178. The Bears had 10 more digs than the Wildcats. They also served seven aces to Arizona’s two and kept the Wildcats off balance on serve receive even when they weren’t acing them.
Arizona couldn’t get the same kind of pressure on its serve, and it had no answer for the Bears’ offense.
Two of Baylor’s pin hitters had 16 or more kills and hit .444 or better. Freshman Nadiya Johnson hit .538. Sophomore Kesenia Rakhmanchik led the match with 17 kills. The 33 kills between them tied the 33 total that Arizona had in the match.
Baylor built big leads out of the gates in each set. It was 7-1 in the first, 9-4 in the second, and 7-0 in the third. The Wildcats couldn’t string together enough points to put a dent into the leads.
The loss drops the team to 6-10 overall and 1-4 in the Big 12.
Things do not get easier for the Wildcats. They go to ASU on Thursday and then return home for their only home match in three weeks to face BYU on Saturday. Both the Sun Devils and Cougars are ranked. It’s back on the road for the difficult cross country trip to Cincinnati and West Virginia after that.
