Young and a bit nervous seeking its 20th win of the season against 11th-ranked Colorado State after having just lost to No. 10 BYU, Utah's volleyball team dug itself a little too big of a hole.
Colorado State took the first two games, Utah blazed away in the third, and the Rams came back from a 10-7 Ute lead in the fourth game for a 15-9, 15-12, 3-15, 15-11 Mountain West Conference win in a defense-minded match at Crimson Court Friday night.The Utes complete their MWC and regular-season schedule tonight at 7 on Crimson Court hosting 9-18, 3-9 Wyoming.
It's the last home match for senior setter Graciela Torres-Lopez, who has 887 career assists and who led the Utes in hitting percentage (0.438) Friday with eight kills on 16 attempts with one error.
"My hitting percentage was their fault," Lopez explained, "because they were so worried about our middle." But, she admitted, "I didn't know I had so many."
Utah's middle blocker McKelle Stilson was hitting against a double team all night. "They scouted me well. They knew where I was going," she said. She had 14 kills to lead the Utes, one behind the 15 by Colorado State's Angelea Knopf, who hit 0.375.
This match was more about defense, though. "They out-dug us by 20 (78-58), and we dug a lot of balls," said Utah coach Beth Launiere. "We held each other to low percentages."
Utah had taken CSU to five games in Fort Collins Oct. 23, and Launiere thought the Rams must have gotten nervous in the fourth game Friday when Utah came back from a 7-3 start to lead as late as 10-9 after winning the third game by 12 points.
But the slow start and inability to hold the lead at the end left Utah still looking for Win No. 20.
"We competed really hard, but in the first couple of games, we put pressure on them and then let them off the hook," Launiere said. "there were times when we had them on the run."
At the end, "I don't think it was so much our errors as their experience," she said. "they took advantage of our errors. Good teams do that."
"We helped their defense," said Lopez. "They'd block us, and we got tentative and weren't swinging."
Utah should finish third in the MWC, and Launiere looks forward to possibly meeting CSU again in the second round of the MWC tournament next week at BYU.