(Photo: Paige Cook/WCSN)
Coming into Sunday afternoon’s matchup against the No. 13 Oregon Ducks, the Arizona State Sun Devils had fell in two straight five-set thrillers at Desert Financial Arena, one to the UNLV Rebels and the other to rival Arizona. Such a fate repeated itself against the Ducks. After another sluggish start saw the Sun Devils drop the opening two sets, ASU clawed back to even the score before ultimately dropping the fifth set for a third consecutive time (19-25, 14-25, 25-23, 25-23, 7-15).
While some may consider a five-set loss to Oregon an admirable feat, Sun Devils head coach Sanja Tomasevic no longer subscribes to such a sentiment, believing that her players and coaching staff have come to a point where finishing matches on the winning side is their primary focus.
“Fighting hard and staying in the matches at this point shouldn’t be good enough for us,” said Tomasevic following Arizona State’s sixth loss of the season. “Like good, we’re not getting smoked. We’re fighting. But, we need to win.”
Tomasevic would go on to highlight those “little things” that have hampered the Sun Devils’ ability to warrant success in the fifth set, the biggest of which being their lack of a clear on-court leader.
“Everybody in the Pac-12 can do big things. We did big things tonight, too. But, they won because they had somebody who really, really wanted to win,” Tomasevic explained. “(Brooke Nuneviller) came out to win and we need somebody like that on our team, too.”
Oregon’s junior outside hitter finished with a match-high 22 kills, six of which came in the final set. Arizona State as a team registered just seven points in the fifth set.
Though forcing three ties and holding the lead twice in the first half of the first set, the Sun Devils often found themselves working from behind. After knotting things up at 13 apiece, Tomasevic’s young squad would falter, losing 12 of the next 18 points. The experienced club from Eugene would reap benefits from a balanced attack led by Nuneviller’s four first-set kills.
In the post-game press conference, Tomasevic specified her disappointment toward the number of unforced errors and subsequent points that her team handed to the Ducks.
“I mean, we missed six serves in set one. We came out earlier this morning for 30 minutes and all we did was serve,” the fifth-year Sun Devil head coach told reporters. “And we talked about the pressure serving, and we missed six serves in our own gym to start the match. I mean, that’s just unacceptable.”
Arizona State gave away 12 points by error in the first set, six by serve and six by attack.
Oregon made full use of their early momentum, jumping out to an 8-2 lead in the second set. From that point forward, the Sun Devils’ smallest deficit was six points as the Ducks bolstered themselves to a dominant 11-point victory, 25-14.
Tomasevic spoke of Oregon’s elite balance on the offensive side in Arizona State’s post-game presser Thursday and the Ducks’ slew of attackers proved her right, especially in the second frame.
With a total of 18 kills, the Oregon offense saw contributions from every single one of their main hitters. Redshirt sophomore middle blocker Karson Bacon led the way with five kills, sophomore right side hitter Morgan Lewis chipped in four of her own, and the remaining nine strikes would consist of three from Nuneviller, two from junior opposite hitter Gloria Mutiri, and one apiece from redshirt sophomore and senior outsides Abby Hansen and Taylor Borup. By significant contrast, the Sun Devils would only come to tally seven kills in the same set.
“I really disliked our first two sets… It shouldn’t take us this long to get going. We practice in the mornings,” Tomasevic said. “So, we know what it takes to be awake, what it takes to be sharp and ready to go, so we’re just going to have to come out stronger. You know, it just has to happen eventually.”
Save Arizona State’s loss against Arizona this past Thursday, four out of the team’s five defeats coming into Sunday’s matchup resulted after dropping the first set.
Regardless of such factoids, the Sun Devils did not fold and showed major grit in a must-win third set that contained eight ties and four lead changes. Recognizing the slow starts from junior outside hitter Iman Isanovic and sophomore outside hitter Marta Levinska, Tomasevic spoke to her two primary attackers about making adjustments in their approach for the remaining sets.
“Well, I asked them to start hitting the edges of the block and hitting deep corner. They kept hitting either low seam or around the block clean shots (right) in the lap of defenders. They’re a really good defensive team. Their defense reads really well and puts themselves around their big (blockers), so the only way to score against them in that kind of situation is to use that block. And I asked Marta and Iman to step it up for us because they were doing really bad in the first two sets.”
In implementing such elaborate feedback from their head coach, Isanovic and Levinska were finally able to break through offensively for the Sun Devil offense. The left-handed Levinska did work near the right-side pins pounding down four kills with Isanovic measuring up three kills for herself to boost their squad to a 25-23 set three victory.
In addition, contributions from sophomores Claire Jeter and Roberta Rabelo helped compliment the emergence of their team’s go-to hitters, pouring in three kills each during the third frame. Jeter, in particular, turned in yet another efficient performance, finishing with 13 kills and a .409 hitting percentage.
“She can hit any shot. She can hit cross-line and, you know, she can hit zone one, zone five,” Tomasevic said of Jeter’s skills. “She does a really good job and I think her and (Ella Snyder’s) connection is pretty good. Claire has been that consistent piece in our offense.”
One frame away from forcing a third consecutive fifth set, the Sun Devils made sure to give themselves another comeback shot at victory. Even despite another solid offensive showing from the Ducks’ plethora of middle and outside attackers, the Sun Devils managed to overcome an early four-point deficit, rallying back behind their most balanced display of offense the entire afternoon.
Levinska led with five kills as Isanovich, Jeter, and Badini collected three apiece just above Rabelo’s two; needless to say, the Sun Devils needed every single contribution to squeak out of the fourth set with another two-point win, 25-23.
In the fifth set, Nuneviller opened with the first four kills for the Ducks, helping Oregon sprint to the final 15 points of the match. Tomasevic’s Sun Devils hung in there, just down 9-7 at one point in the final set, but in the blink of an eye, the Ducks took absolute control and closed out the matchup on a 6-0 scoring run, taking the set 15-7 and the match 3-2.
Now at a record of 0-2 in conference play, Arizona State’s tough Pac-12 schedule resumes this coming Friday as they hit the road to California to take on No. 14 Stanford.
