(Photo: Sun Devil Athletics)
TEMPE — After dropping the second set of the night and narrowly escaping the third set with a win, No. 7 Arizona State volleyball needed to enter the fourth set of its home opener matchup against Florida Gulf Coast with a bang.
The set started off with a 1-1 tie, but redshirt freshman outside hitter Kiylah Presley had a chance to change that. She received a set from senior setter Sydney Henry on the right side of the court, cocked her arm back and smashed a kill off the chest of FGCU junior outside hitter Julija Grubisic Cabo, knocking her backward and onto the floor.
As Grubisic Cabo fell, so did the metaphorical wall protecting FGCU from the full extent of ASU’s offensive attacks. The Sun Devils stormed the castle with a calm intensity, embarking on a 10-0 run to let everyone in Desert Financial Arena know what direction the match was headed in.
“After that third set, we were like, ‘We need to finish this and give it our 100%,’” senior outside hitter Bailey Miller said. “Just getting emotional, but keeping it composed and getting intense.”
The Sun Devils (3-1) rode that intensity to an eventual 25-13 win in the fourth set, securing the 3-1 victory over Florida Gulf Coast (2-2) in the first game of the Nore-Stahl Classic. The Friday night crowd went home happy, and head coach JJ Van Niel was happy to see his team get back to its style of volleyball after earlier struggles.
“It’s kind of the brand we need to play,” Van Niel said. “We’ve got to go fast, we’ve got to spread the ball around. I thought we started doing a good job of that, of getting balls into the gap, getting balls over to the right, getting balls in the left at times, and then, we really got them in trouble from the service line.”
Presley’s kill early in the fourth set was impactful, not just because it gave ASU the lead, but because it kept Miller at the service line. The 6-foot-3 Texan was able to create mismatches from a physicality standpoint, exploiting the Eagles’ outside hitters and keeping her opponents out of system. With the Eagles unable to orchestrate effective plays off of Miller’s serves, the stage was set for the Sun Devils’ game-changing run.
Miller’s serves helped induce three FGCU attack errors, six ASU kills and a service ace of her own. When FGCU finally broke out of the cycle, ASU already had one hand wrapped around the victory. The Eagles had an improbably difficult hill to climb to get back into the match against the No. 7 team in the country, and they had to do it in the face of a crowd of 2,642, which had erupted, sounding like a mass 10 times the size.
“After we had that serving run, we kind of settled in,” Miller said. “We were able to go after it without knowing that they’re two points behind; they’re instead 10 points behind, so we can just go ahead and go for it.”
The confidence propelled the Sun Devils to victory and helped wash away any bad taste from the team’s earlier match struggles.
The Sun Devils barely eked out a 25-23 win in the match’s first set after coming back from a 14-10 deficit, but weren’t able to capitalize on any momentum. It fell behind early in the second set, and although it caught up to FGCU — like in the first set — it couldn’t grab hold of a lead. Even in the third set, which ASU won 25-23, it allowed a 9-3 FGCU run to make it close at the end.
The explanation for the struggles mainly stems from the fact that while the Sun Devils are a talented group, they’re also a group chock-full of newcomers who are still learning to play together. An even more on-the-nose reason for the struggles was the absence of the reigning Big 12 Offensive Player of the week, junior opposite hitter Noemi Glover, who watched the match from the sidelines, accompanied by a crutch.
“We have a new team up front,” Van Niel said. “So (it) took a little time to get the nerves out, and obviously, we had to switch our lineup around a little bit because Noemi is out. I thought the team did a nice job. It took them a while, but once we settled in, we started kind of doing things we needed to do.”
Glover led ASU in kills in each of the three matches she participated in before her injury and was the heart of the offensive attack. With her out of the lineup, freshman outside hitter Maéva Schalk also unavailable due to injury, and redshirt freshman middle blocker Jadyn Wilgus out for the year after suffering a torn ACL, Van Niel needed some other players to step up.
Miller, Presley, senior outside hitter Tatum Parrott and graduate middle blocker Colby Neal all rose to the challenge, each of them recording double-digit kills. Miller led the way with 13, but she was arguably overshadowed in the statsheet by Presley and Neal.
Presley registered 11 kills on a .286 hitting percentage and a .393 kill percentage in her first career start, and Neal recorded 10 kills on a .429 hitting percentage and a .476 kill percentage, with eight total blocks for good measure. A major reason why Neal was able to step up Friday night is her growing relationship with Henry.
“I think Syd, this past week, has done a great job of making, especially middles, feel really confident,” Neal said. “… I was kind of just really in the moment this game, just whenever I’d look at Syd, I felt really, really comfortable and really confident.”
The 3-1 victory over FGCU represented the second time that Van Niel has faced — and beaten — the Eagles in his tenure as ASU’s head coach. The first matchup came on Aug. 25, 2023, Van Niel’s very first match at the helm of the program. Since then, he’s transformed ASU from a floundering, former NCAA tournament regular to one of the premier programs in the country. Each year has different hurdles that Van Niel will need to clear to maintain that distinction, but if the hurdles the team cleared Friday night are any indication, those future challenges can be overcome.
“I’ve seen us build the program that we’re trying to build,” Van Niel said. “Build the culture we’re trying to build. Build the systems we’re trying to build. So it’s really fun, I thought we got away from some of our system stuff early on, and as we clean that up, it kind of worked the way we want it to work.
