The Arizona Wildcats hit .339 as a team and had 10 blocks, but the result was a four-set loss to No. 25 BYU volleyball in Smith Fieldhouse on Wednesday evening. The Cougars took the match by the set scores
of 25-18, 25-23, 19-25, 25-18.
“We couldn’t stop their outsides,” said Arizona head coach Rita Stubbs.
BYU outside hitters Suli Davis and Claire Little Chambers had 50 of the Cougars’ 71 kills. Davis hit .386 and Little Chambers hit .450.
“You got to be able to match that,” Stubbs said.
The Wildcats did fairly well, but they definitely did not match BYU’s power from the left side. Jordan Wilson did her best, though.
Wilson had 21 kills on .370 hitting. She added two total blocks for 22 points. She also had eight digs.
However, Wilson had her difficulties both serving and receiving. She had two service errors without an ace. She was aced by the Cougars’ servers five times.
Carlie Cisneros had a double-double with 12 kills and 10 digs. She had one total block for 12.5 points. She was also the victim of two BYU aces and one service error of her own without an ace. However, her primary struggle was efficiency. She was the only one of Arizona’s four primary scorers who hit below .370; she ended with a .179 hitting efficiency.
The Wildcats also had problems on the right side. Stubbs tried to address that by rotating Renee Jones, Britt Carlson, and Ana Heath at various times.
“It’s always been a work in progress,” Stubbs said. “Will probably continue to be a work in progress for us, just finding the right pieces at the right time. You know it’s like, when both Britt and Renee struggle blocking, then, you know, you put Ana in, which gives you more offense, which is needed, but then when the outside hitters were just going, I was like, Okay, we got to go back and try to put something big in front of them, slow them down a little bit. And, you know, it did work. But then, can we sustain?”
Despite BYU’s one-dimensional offense, Arizona couldn’t put a stop to it. The Cougars finally got some offense out of their middles late in the match, but they were able to keep the upper hand without the benefit of variety from other positions.
“We were not in a good spot as blockers,” Stubbs said. “We were reaching and, I mean, they swing fast. Last time we played them, Suli was the one that did well. Little was just okay, but they both were on today, so until we started serving short to get them to move a little bit, we didn’t have any options there.”
The Cougars came out hot on both offense and defense. They hit .361 and served three of their seven aces. They had three of their four total blocks and 12 digs.
Arizona was decidedly not hot. UA had just nine kills compared to 18 for BYU in the opening set and hit .192. They had two blocks, but they also had two blocking errors.
“That first set, I don’t think that we did a very good job of playing defense,” Stubbs said. “They were just hitting balls in the middle of the court. But you become a better defender when you’re a better blocker.”
The Wildcats settled in for the next two sets and the first half of the final set. They had their chances to take the second set and they controlled the third comfortably.
They had 17 kills in both the second and third sets. They only got aced once after seeing the Cougars get three points off aces in the first set. Their digs bumped up to 14 and 15 while they matched their block total from the first with two per set. They didn’t have any blocking errors to offset those blocks.
Arizona hasn’t pulled off the reverse sweep yet this year. They would have to do that if they wanted to sweep the season series against BYU. First, they had to get to a fifth set.
The fourth was a tight set, and Arizona kept its quality of play up for most of it but couldn’t sustain it through the end. The Wildcats’ final lead in the fourth set came at 17-16. The final tie was at 17-17.
From there, BYU went on an 8-1 run to claim the match. Arizona’s only point during the run came on a kill by middle blocker Adrianna Bridges. The Cougars had two aces and three kills down the stretch. The other three points came on hitting errors by the Wildcats’ outside hitters.
As for why the Wildcats were able to handle the Cougars’ serve for 2.5 sets but got exposed at the beginning and end of the match, Stubbs said it was about both the quality of BYU’s serves and the inconsistency of Arizona’s serve receive.
“Other than that last run, I don’t feel, I don’t recall [Little Chambers] going on a run as a server, but I know she has the ability to do it,” Stubbs said. “So up until that last set, I don’t recall that she…took over as a server, but we struggled in service, even the first set, for sure, and then we got better with it.”
Although they hit .308 in the fourth set, it was also about Arizona only getting 11 kills in the frame after getting just nine in the first.
“The reality is, for sets one and four, we didn’t score enough,” Stubbs said. “So, that’s passing. That’s not picking the right shot every single time. So there’s a little bit of both.”
Getting better at serve receive in the middle of the match was one positive. There were other things to take away from it, too.
“We got our middles involved,” Stubbs said. “Could afford to get them involved a little bit more, but both of the middles did a good job and stayed involved. I was pleased Renee kind of bounced back after being out, and going up and trying to slow them down a little bit more.”
Both of Arizona’s middles hit over .400. Bridges was the Wildcats’ second-leading scorer with 13 points. Those came from nine kills on .421 hitting and seven total blocks (one solo). She also had four digs.
Journey Tucker had another match without a hitting error. She ended with an attacking stat line of 8/0/17 for a hitting percentage of .471. She also contributed three total blocks for 9.5 points.
Sustaining the good things longer was a topic Stubbs kept coming back to. Arizona has improved on that over the course of the season, but she wants to see the team continue that course. The first opportunity comes on Friday at Utah. The Utes swept No. 13 Kansas on Wednesday.
“I want to see us be able to sustain what we’re doing,” she said. “It was one of the things I said in the locker room. You know, that’s part of youthfulness, right? Why can’t we keep going the entire time? And so it’s a mental thing where you have to learn how to just be able to push through, or be so stinking good that no one knows that mentally, you kind of zoned out. I don’t think they do it on purpose, but they have to be held accountable for it.”
