Box Score LONG BEACH, Calif. – McKenna Woodford's 17 kills led the Washington State volleyball team (4-1) to a 3-1 win over UC Irvine (2-3) Saturday morning at the Long Beach State Mizuno Invitational at the Walter Pyramid in Long Beach, Calif. Set scores were 25-18, 25-21, 21-15, and 25-17.
 
Woodford, a sophomore, hit .467 and contributed eight digs, two blocks and one ace. Taylor Mims had nine kills, hitting .533 for the match and leading the team with four blocks. Kyra Holt added nine kills and nine digs. Adding eight kills each were Hailey Bethune (.412) and Claire Martin (.545). Nicole Rigoni set up 23 assists and led the Cougs with three aces. Haley MacDonald had 21 assists while Alexis Dirige led the match with a career-high 15 digs. Tani Stephens served a pair of aces.
 
UCI's Victoria Dennis and Haley DeSales combined for 27 kills to lead the Anteaters with Dennis also serving three aces. Harlee Kekauoha and Ali Koumelis combined for 23 digs. Idara Akpakpa led the team with four blocks.
 
The Cougars hit a season-best .350 and held UCI to a .220 hitting percentage including a fourth-set hitting percentage of .034.
 
"This is a very good UC Irvine team but I was really proud of the way we came out. They were a very good serving team so we struggled a bit passing but wanted the outside hitters to pick up their numbers and McKenna Woodford certainly did that today," WSU Head Coach Jen Greeny said. "We had a much better day serving, especially serving really well in the fourth set and got them out of system quite a bit. Passing wasn't as good; we don't see a ton of top-spin serves and they were serving a lot of them. But I think we settled in and as the match went along got a little bit better at returning those serves. We served more consistently overall today. I think we can clean up a few of those errors from the service line but were much better today."
 
WSU wraps up the Long Beach State Mizuno Invitational Sat., Sept. 3, taking on host Long Beach State (2-2) at 7 p.m., in the Walter Pyramid.