by SEATTLE — The Washington State volleyball team completed the 2017 regular season with a 17-15 overall record, 6-14 in Pac-12 after losing to No. 12 Washington (24-7, 14-6) with set scores of 25-19, 25-13, and 25-14, Friday night at Alaska Airlines Arena at Hec Edmondson Pavilion in the Boeing Apple Cup Series.
Junior Taylor Mims (Crow Tribe) supplied 11 of the Cougars 29 kills. Ella Lajos added eight kills while hitting .400 and Claire Martin had six kills. Ashley Brown had 24 assists and Alexis Dirige contributed 11 digs. Jocelyn Urias had the lone block for WSU, a solo block, and was joined by Abby Phillips in each serving one ace.
The Huskies landed 38 kills as a team, hit .346 for the match and held WSU to a .106 team hitting percentage. Washington out-served WSU 11 to two, out-dug WSU 38 to 27, and out-blocked the visitors 10 to one.
WHY & HOW…
WSU Head Coach Jen Greeny said, “First, Washington is a fantastic team and they showed it tonight. They definitely won the serve and pass game and we were really having a hard time getting anything going both offensively and defensively. They are a tremendous serving team and they certainly showed that tonight. It’s hard to win any match when you get aced 11 times. On the other side of that, I didn’t think our serving was very aggressive at all. Those two things combined for not a real pretty night for the Cougs so a lot of credit to them. We were out of system most of the evening and they were in system so it makes it tough to get our block going. That 10 to one blocking stat shows that it all starts at the serving line. We’ll have to get back to the drawing board in the serve and pass game. We have to regroup and hopefully get ready for next week.”
On WSU making a return trip to the NCAA tournament possibility Greeny said, “You never want to leave things in the hands of a committee but the conference that we play in is incredibly tough. And we played a lot of great opponents in the preseason and those teams have done extremely well including a lot of top 50 teams that we had wins against. That should help us. Our RPI is at 37 and we have a top five rating in strength of schedule. I think the wins against Oregon and UCLA really helps us. You would think that puts us in for sure but you never know what the committee is going to do. These next two days will be extremely long to wait for the selection show. We’re battling injuries but this team never says die and just perseveres so maybe we can keep it going.”
