The roller coaster ride that is the 2018 season of Arizona State volleyball continued last weekend, as the Sun Devils dropped both matches to the Pac-12’s mountain schools, Utah and Colorado. Through ten Pac-12 games, the Sun Devils have proven to be consistently inconsistent.
On a night-to-night basis, head coach Sanja Tomasevic and the Sun Devils have been unable to maintain the high-level of play they began conference play with. Pair the inconsistent play with poor performances at home—the Sun Devils are 1-3 at Wells Fargo Arena in conference matches—and results like last Friday night’s three-set loss to Utah and last Sunday afternoon’s four-set loss to Colorado are bound to happen.
After Sunday’s 1-3, (25-21, 21-25, 22-25, 20-25) loss to the Buffaloes, Tomasevic appeared mystified by the play of her team.
“Every night is something different,” Tomasevic said following Sunday’s loss. “We don’t know how to stay consistently good over time.”
The difference between the Sun Devils on the road and in Tempe during conference play has been remarkable, and is something Tomasevic said she can’t put her finger on.
“I would love to know [why we struggle at home]. Honestly, like it’s mind-blowing to me,” Tomasevic said. “I mean, I’ve been challenging them to own the home court, to play good on the home court. The only thing that I can think of is I don’t know what they do the night before the game, honestly. Because when we’re on the road, I can control what they do.”
For senior Alyse Ford, who had a career-high 29 kills and 15 digs during the loss to Colorado, the home woes come down to nerves.
“I feel like most of my teammates we get super tense when we’re at home versus when we’re away and we don’t have anyone rooting for us,” Ford said. “That’s when we basically decide to show up and actually try to play. And I don’t know what it is playing here, like it shouldn’t be that intense.”
Tomasevic echoed Ford’s sentiments, saying that the team can’t capitalize on the larger, friendlier home crowds at Wells Fargo Arena.
“There’s no home court advantage or anything for us, honestly,” Tomasevic said. “That’s something that I talked to them about on Friday, too. We’ve known this for a while now. When [942 crew] shows up, we love it, but we choke.”
Even as Tomasevic, Ford and the rest of the Sun Devil squad is looking for answers, they know they have to clean up their mistakes. Against Utah, the Sun Devils gave Utah 26 points, racking up 18 attack errors, seven service errors and one blocking error in the match. In their matchup with the Buffaloes, the trend continued as Arizona State had 27 attack errors, 13 service errors and three blocking errors.
Tomasevic pointed to sophomore Claire Kovensky’s five-kill, -.033 hitting percentage performance on Sunday as an example of her squad’s lack of depth.
“We need depth on the bench and that goes back to recruiting,” Tomasevic said. “It’s going to take some time to get those players in and to make sure that we have enough people on the bench that can step in, so that way we don’t have to keep the players that are hitting negative on the court.”
Following Friday’s loss to the Utes, Tomasevic said the team was still growing. She went back to calling this season a growing year after the early success in conference play had raised her expectations for the season.
That success feels like a long time ago now, as the bar has been lowered back down for this team. If the Sun Devils want to be brutally honest with themselves, they know that beating the Colorados and the Utahs of the Pac-12 should be expected, not hoped for, if they want to experience true growth.
