WHO WHAT WHEN WHERE…
PULLMAN, Wash. -- The Washington State volleyball team (3-1) lost its first match of the season in five sets to Baylor Thursday night in the fourth contest of the Cougar Challenge Tournament at Bohler Gym.
Baylor (3-1) won with set scores of 23-25, 25-19, 26-24, 19-25, and 15-12.
A trio of junior led the Cougars with
Taylor Mims' 16 kills,
McKenna Woodford's 12 kills and
Ella Lajos' 10 kills while hitting a match-high .562 percent.
Casey Schoenlein and
Jocelyn Urias each had a match-high six blocks each as WSU won the blocking battle 14 to six. Both setters had double-doubles with sophomore
Ashley Brown tallying 21 assists and 11 digs with four of WSU's six service aces. Freshman Panny Tusa had 19 assists and 13 digs. Sophomore
Alexis Dirige led the Cougs with 20 digs.
WHY & HOW...
WSU Head Coach Jen Greeny said, "Baylor is definitely a fantastic team and this is a team like we will see in the Pac-12 Conference. So a lot of experience was gained tonight. Some good things and of course a lot of things to work on. But I thought the overall experience of a tight match and going five will pay dividends later on in the season."
On making the comeback in the fourth set being down 2-1 Greeny said, "I think we passed really well and our block really started to heat up in the fourth and forced their hitters to make some errors. With blocking and defense we really turned that around."
On the quick turnaround in tournament play Greeny said, "It's never easy so I definitely won't say it's easy but just trying to learn from both matches today and turn around and put those lessons into action tomorrow is something that everyone in the country is doing right now. We need to do that as well. Baylor is a great team and best of luck to them the rest of the season."
NOTES…
- This was Baylor's first match of the day while WSU played Incarnate Word four hours earlier.
- There were 17 ties and four lead changes in Set 1.
- Baylor out-hit the Cougars 67 kills to 50 and out-dug the Cougs 76-69.
- The match took 2 hours and 27 minutes to play.
- Last year at Waco, the Bears defeated WSU Sept. 17 3-2 (25-23, 21-25, 25-21, 22-25, 15-9).
- Attendance: 825
MARK YOUR CALENDAR…
The Cougars (3-1) open Friday's Cougar Challenge slate taking on Quinnipiac (0-6) at Noon followed by Incarnate Word (1-1) versus College of Charleston (4-1) at 2:30 p.m., Baylor (3-1) versus Quinnipiac at 5:30 p.m. and WSU versus College of Charleston at 7:30 p.m. in Bohler Gym.
