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Despite head coach Jason Watson’s concerns following the loss to Arizona, No. 22 ASU volleyball has been selected to compete in the NCAA tournament. The Sun Devils will face Texas A&M; in the first round of the tournament.
The Aggies are unranked, but were No. 19 in RPI. ASU was No. 41.
“You work since August to get to this moment and now that you have it, now you can kind of gear up,” Watson said Tuesday. “I thought yesterday’s practice was one of the best that we’ve had in quite some time. Not so much in how we executed some stuff but just, there was a little bit of relief.”
Statistically, the teams are very similar, but the way they compile those stats are very different. The Aggies' middles are the key to their offense.
“They do like to set their middles off one foot, they go behind,” Watson said. “That’s I think the matchup that has us greatly concerned is being able to contain the speed and the range at which their middles are hitting.”
ASU will have to change its focus from the outside hitters. It is not uncommon for junior middle blocker Mercedes Binns to slide over to the side and help sophomore outside hitter BreElle Bailey on the block.
Binns will probably be leaning toward the middle Thursday to assist junior middle hitter Whitney Follette.
This is a different approach from the majority of the Pac-12 teams. Watson pointed out that many in the conference rely on outside hitters, including Arizona and UCLA.
“Now you’ve got to rely on your middles to go get on some tendencies,” he said. “I think our middles are physical enough to be able to do that.”
This is the third consecutive year ASU has qualified for the NCAA tournament. The last time the Sun Devils went three years in a row was 1992-95.
“It’s in some way, shape, it’s validating what I think we felt like we could do this season,” Watson said. “The next challenge is to stay in the tournament longer.”
Despite falling to BYU in the first round last year, the team has worked to create a winning mentality over the last few seasons.
It began after 2011, one of ASU volleyball's worst years in recent memory. The offense was revamped through the arrival of outside hitter Macey Gardner. She has been consistent throughout her college career and as a result was named to the Pac-12 All-Conference Team for the third consecutive year.
This is the second time an ASU player has accomplished this feat and the first since alumna Christine Garner in 1993-95, who not-so-ironically attended in the middle of ASU’s last three-year NCAA tournament run.
“We can all look at her being here as this spark that got this,” Watson said.
Gardner has 560 kills — the third most in the Pac-12 — and has decreased her error count.
“The impressive thing about that too is it’s not like you don’t know it’s going to her,” Watson said. “She’s getting those kills and everybody knows.”
This year, the offense is spread more effectively. Although she continues to set Gardner massive amounts, the middles are more involved on offense and the other outside hitters have improved.
Sophomore Kizzy Willey is one of these hitters. She injured her shoulder against Washington State Nov. 21 and sat out the next match against Washington. She played limited time against UCLA the next week before returning in full force two days later against Arizona, getting 36 attacks.
“(I’m) just rehabbing it up and pretty much back to normal now,” she said.
She said it was nerve-related and a sort of continuation from her elbow surgery of two years ago. Her hand gets numb, she said, but she’s been cleared to play and played fine against Arizona.
Willey said that though her shoulder was sore after that match, she iced it and will be able to play through the pain in the coming match. ASU needs it to be as healed as possible — her serve receipt suffered with her shoulder, and that’s one statistic differential that does stand out between the two schools.
ASU made 151 receiving errors as opposed to Texas A&M’s 139. The Aggies also serve better more consistently than ASU does. The Sun Devils have more kills (130 vs. 102) but the errors killed them. ASU has hit 282 service errors in the season. Texas A&M; has 162. The Aggies average about 1.43 errors per set; ASU’s number is about 2.17.
The match is at 3:30 in Austin, Texas. If ASU can come away victorious, they’ll play the winner of the Texas vs. Northwestern match the next day.
Reach the reporter at logan.newman@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @Logan_Newsman
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Editor's Note: A previous serious of this story said the team had qualified for the Pac-12 tournament. It has been corrected to indicate that the team will play in the NCAA tournament.
