Arizona volleyball head coach Rita Stubbs
has said that one thing a team is always in control of is its fight. The Wildcats showed a lot of fight against No. 10 Creighton on Friday afternoon, but they couldn’t close the deal in a 3-2 (26-24, 19-25, 19-25, 25-18, 15-12) loss.“I told the team that there’s nothing to hang our heads about,” Stubbs said. “We went out there and we competed and we learned a lot of things.”
There were numerous times the Wildcats could have surrendered. Each time, they found
the will to fight back. It had them on the brink of their first road victory over a top 10 team since Stubbs took over in 2023.
The moment didn’t get too big for the Wildcats, not even for senior outside hitter Destiny Ndam-Simpson, who was playing in her hometown against her former team.
Ndam-Simpson led Arizona with 16 kills. She added four aces, four total blocks, and nine digs.
She didn’t have to do it on her own, though. Sophomore opposite hitter Renee Jones had yet another big match and junior outside hitter Carlie Cisneros bounced back from a difficult outing against UCSB last weekend.
“[Cisneros] has a lot of family here as well,” Stubbs said. “But you know Carly always shows up for the big teams. I mean, it’s always like I got something to show y’all that I’m capable of doing it.”
Jones was second on the team with 12 kills. She led the team with a .423 hitting efficiency. She added three total blocks for 13.5 points.
Cisneros was just behind Jones with 11 kills. She did it on a very efficient .310 hitting. She also had nine digs.
The first set was close through the first 18 points. The teams were tied 9-9 when the Bluejays started to pull away. They went up 21-12 and it looked like Arizona was just going to be outclassed. It was the first time the Wildcats responded.
Maria Olga Siapani subbed in and stepped to the service line. Two aces were followed by two Ndam-Simpson kills. Arizona was back in the match at 21-17.
The Wildcats continued to fight, tying the set at 24 apiece. The Bluejays regrouped, but the run by Arizona set the team up for success in the next frame.
Creighton took the early lead, but Arizona kept chipping away until the teams were tied at 10. The Wildcats went on an 11-5 run from there to get within four points of leveling the match. That six-point lead held up.
In many recent matches against ranked teams, Arizona has won a set but then gone away. It’s almost as if the Wildcats don’t expect to do more than that. They didn’t go away this time.
Arizona took its first lead in set three at 5-4. It didn’t look back, pushing that lead to 17-10. Creighton made a run to cut the lead to four points at 21-17, but the hole was too big. Arizona edged to one set shy of a top 10 road victory.
In their loss to UCSB last Sunday, the Wildcats had difficulty closing out sets. They were up late in the second and third sets but the Gauchos came back both times to close out the match in straight sets. Against Creighton, the problem was closing out the match.
The biggest obstacle was Trinity Shadd-Ceres. She had 12 of her 29 kills in the final two sets of the match. She committed just one hitting error over that stretch.
“I thought we got a little hesitant in the fifth set versus being the aggressor,” Stubbs said. “We were doing a phenomenal job blocking in sets one through three, and then all of a sudden that died off, and zero had her way with us.”
The key for the Wildcats is to play with the same intensity tomorrow when the face Tulsa.
“It’s not hard getting the team motivated for a top 10 opponent,” Stubbs said. “There’s no work for that. The key is how do you respond when a team that’s equal to you or even better than you, just not in the top 10.”
