Senior setter Shannan McCready serves during ASU's match against UA. The Wildcats swept the match 3-0 at Wells Fargo Arena on Friday, Nov. 28, 2014. (Photo by Logan Newman)Perhaps the worst-case scenario took place for No. 22 ASU volleyball on Friday night: The Sun Devils lost to No. 14 UA 3-0, and the poor score may hurt them come selection time to the NCAA tournament.
"There are lots of good teams out there that are making cases on whether or not they should be in the postseason and they’re making a better case than we have, especially tonight,” ASU coach Jason Watson said. “I’m greatly concerned and very, very nervous that 64 teams are going to get to practice on Monday and we may not be one of them.”
ASU seemed to have clinched a spot by defeating No. 17 UCLA on Wednesday night. Their Pac-12 record is a respectable 9-11, with four losses coming against No. 1 Stanford and No. 5 Washington.
However, Watson said the record of their last ten matches (4-6) will hurt them. Additionally, the committee may not want to select a record ten teams from one conference.
ASU’s struggles tonight once again came from a lack of urgency.
“(We) lacked any kind of intensity, any kind of urgency that you need at this late stage of the season,” Watson said.
They didn’t seem to have the excitement and emotion that UA, working to clinch a seed in the tournament, had. They struggled on offense and weren’t going after the ball aggressively enough on defense.
Watson said they didn’t seem to recognize the implications the match had on the post-season, on the Territorial Cup, and on that of the crowd of 3,000 watching them.
“There are some already inherent things that you would assume that a team would get excited about playing at home and we haven’t,” he said.
ASU fell behind 22-24 in the first set but tied the score and eventually took a 26-25 lead. UA called a timeout with the momentum swinging toward ASU.
On the next play, sophomore outside hitter Ashley Harris struck the ball. It looked like it sailed over the baseline for an ASU victory — the crowd certainly thought so — but the judge ruled that it skimmed the finger of an ASU defender at the net.
UA won the set 29-27.
Harris stunned ASU with how well she played. Junior setter Bianca Arellano said she has improved a lot since the last time the two schools played.
“She was able to hit high over the block and rip it down the line,” she said. “All of a sudden she had this really nice cross-court shot and that’s something that we just weren’t exactly prepared for.”
She managed to help UA when their star outside hitter, senior Madi Kingdon, couldn’t get the job done. Kingdon ended with 15 kills and seven errors on a .163 hitting percentage; Harris had 12 kills and only three errors.
Setter Shannan McCready is recognized on Senior Night with her family at Wells Fargo Arena prior to the game against UA on Friday, Nov 28, 2014. (Photo by Logan Newman)Kingdon is second in the Pac-12 in kills. Junior outside hitter Macey Gardner, who is third in kills in the conference, said ASU focused on her tendencies in preparation for the match.
“As a block… we put good, solid hands up and it was hard for her to get kills,” she said.
The second set belonged to UA from the get-go. The Wildcats took a 5-10 lead and went on to win 20-25 despite recording four service errors in the set.
The middle blockers struggled to get going. Junior Whitney Follette had four errors in the set and Mercedes Binns had two kills.
Arellano took the blame for it. She said she set them too low in the beginning of the match and that forced them into awkward shots, affecting their confidence and impacting them in the high-pressure situations late in the match.
Instead, she was looking more toward sophomore outside hitter Kizzy Willey. Willey had nine kills and only two errors on 36 attempts. Her injury that’s plagued her the last three matches is a thing of the past, Watson said, and rest helped her.
ASU started strong in the third set. They took a 5-1 lead, three of the points coming from three consecutive blocks, and Arizona called a timeout. ASU put on two more and Arizona used their final timeout of the set.
Arizona cut the deficit to 7-4 in mere minutes.
“I think we thought that it was just going to be easy from here on out,” Watson said.
ASU took another large lead, 11-4, before slipping again. The error margin changed: Arizona had six errors in those first 15 points. They stopped making errors.
The Wildcats tied the score at 13 and took their first lead on a kill by Harris to make the score 17-18. ASU never led again and lost 21-25.
“We stopped making plays,” Watson said. “We hit under .100. We had eight kills in the third game so we couldn’t kill a ball, our passing fell apart and I didn’t think our offense was at all in tempo.”
It was a poor ending to senior night recognizing a leader and team-favorite in setter Shannan McCready.
Some of her family traveled to Arizona from her native state of Hawaii and presented her with leis and hakus, which she described as “a lei on the head” in a pregame ceremony.
“It’s tradition where I’m from to give leis and a haku,” she said. “It was a pretty touching moment.”
Her teammates gave her a golden bracelet to remind her of one she used to wear.
“Being here has just made me who I am today,” McCready said. “Being able to play alongside these ladies has been one of the best experiences in my life and I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
Reach the reporter at logan.newman@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @Logan_Newsman
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