Nov. 6, 2011
Box Score
LOS ANGELES - No. 1 UCLA won its eighth-straight Pac-12 volleyball match Sunday afternoon defeating Washington State 25-16, 25-20, 25-17 at the John Wooden Center on the UCLA campus. UCLA moves to an overall record of 22-3 and Pac-12 record of 15-2 while WSU drops to 12-14 overall and 4-12 in league action.
UCLA's Priscilla Duke-Ezeji led the match with 14 kills (.478) and Rachel Kidder added 13 more kills as the Bruins hit .381 as a team. Lauren Van Orden had 44 assists and Lainey Gera had 12 digs. Kelly Reeves and Sara Sage each had four blocks.
Meagan Ganzer's 10 kills and 11 digs led the Cougars. Ganzer now has 1,405 career kills which is fourth-best at WSU all-time. Chelsey Bettinson had eight kills, hit .500 and added two blocks in the match. Camryn Irwin had 25 assists and Jordan Levenseller chipped in another 10 digs. Marcelina Glab led the team with four blocks and Zoe Gogan added three blocks.
"UCLA is a very disciplined team and has so many weapons. When a team is hitting .381 and side outs at 94 percent in the first set, that is really hard to compete against," Cougar Head Coach Jen Greeny said. "We weren't making a ton of mistakes but they were so efficient with what they were doing and right now that is hard for us to keep up with."
The Cougars had a good effort in the first set but could not counter the Bruins hitting .486 with 20 kills and three errors in 35 swings while WSU landed 11 kills with four errors in 36 attacks. Kidder had six of UCLA's kills and Ganzer had five kills for WSU.
WSU battled well into the second set, tying the home team eight times with the final knot at 19 points all. The Bruins then outscored the Cougars six to one to take the 25-20 win.
Freshman Gogan subbed in for Jaicee Harris and provided a stronger front block for the Cougars in this set. WSU used an eight to four scoring run to stay within striking distance of the Bruins, down 14-10. After UCLA scored two more points WSU kept pounding away and closed the gap to 16-14. The Bruins tallied six straight points to take a 22-14 advantage and went on to win 25-17.
The Washington State volleyball team will be in Pullman for Dad's Weekend festivities next weekend taking on No. 7 California (23-4, 13-4) Friday night at 7 p.m. and No. 3 Stanford (19-4, 13-4) Sunday afternoon at 12:30 p.m.
