Junior outside hitter Macey Gardner attacks the ball in a home game against Pepperdine on Sept 20, 2014. (Photo by Mario Mendez)After falling in the first set to Cal, No. 18 ASU turned its defense around and won the next three (23-25, 25-20, 25-17, 25-21).
It was a tough match for ASU to come through. Despite being unranked, ASU coach Jason Watson once against emphasized the strength of Cal and the Pac-12 in general.
“I think one of the things that I hope isn’t lost is just the strength of volleyball in this conference,” he said. “Cal, who leaves here 0-6 in conference is a really, really nice team and played really well tonight and challenged us immensely.”
Sophomore outside hitter Kizzy Willey got her career high in digs (17). She was one of four ASU players to end the match with double-digit digs. Junior setter Bianca Arellano had 11, junior outside hitter Macey Gardner had 18 and freshman libero Halle Harker had 20.
It was a true turn around; in the first set, Arellano had one and Gardner had three. Senior outside hitter Christina Higgins of Cal started strong, getting a set-high seven kills.
“(We) changed our rotation a little bit, we put Bre (Bailey) on her whereas in game one, Bianca was on her,” Watson said.
The 6'4 Bailey provided a stronger defensive presence than the 5’5 Arellano, and though Bailey finished with just one block, Watson said her presence affected the court and Higgins’ hits.
There may be another strong defender on the floor soon: junior middle blocker Whitney Follette was dressed out and warmed up with the squad before the match. She underwent appendicitis surgery less than a month ago.
“She’s cleared to play, which is somewhat remarkable,” Watson said.
The original timeframe was 4-6 weeks. There’s a chance she’ll return on Sunday to play No. 1 Stanford.
“We’ll see how she’s feeling and if she’s feeling up to it then we sure would like for her to play,” Watson said.
Unranked Cal was the school that posed a challenge today, though. They pulled ahead 21-16 in set one due to tons of deflections and overall good digging.
ASU turned their defense around in set two. It went ahead 17-13 on a Willey kill — one of her 16 on the night — and held on to win 25-20.
“One of the things that Kizz has always been good at is managing her game,” Watson said, referring to her low error count. “The challenge is for her to get her kills.
She’s been more consistent with her scoring this season, and her path of focusing on her consistency resembles that of Gardner, Watson said.
Having multiple consistent hitters has helped Arellano.
“Building that second (outside hitter) spot helps me make the offense pretty diverse,” Arellano said.
Set three was Cal’s worst in terms of hitting percentage. The Bears hit .024 and made eight hitting errors. In the first two combined, they hit seven.
This marked the improvement on ASU’s digs. It was their first set out-digging Cal, beating them 24-19 on digs.
Set four was a back-and-forth affair. No team led by more than two until ASU took a 17-14 lead off a Gardner kill. Later in the set, she got another kill and a block, putting the lead at 20-16.
Gardner finished with 21 kills and three solo blocks.
Mercedes Binns finished the match with a strong kill. She had eight kills but four errors.
ASU won set four 25-21 and improved their Pac-12 record to 3-2. This came in front of the 1583 person crowd. Watson sincerely said the crowd helped.
“I thought late in game four our crowd certainly helped us,” he said. “There was a service error late in game four that I thought was caused by (it).
This was the error that put the set at 23-20 in favor of ASU. He’ll be hoping the crowd can do the same against Stanford on Sunday when they play at 11:00 at Wells Fargo Arena.
“It’s humbling to have that many people come watch us play volleyball and we’re very thankful.”
Reach the reporter at logan.newman@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @Logan_Newsman
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