(Photo: Travis David V Whittaker/WCSN)
Exactly one month after they swept the Beavers in Corvallis, the Arizona State Sun Devils (13-11, 4-8) extended their losing streak to six straight matches with a 1-3, (25-18, 21-25, 21-25, 22-25) loss to the Oregon State Beavers (11-13, 1-11) on Sunday afternoon.
The Sun Devils offensive struggles, which have stood out over the course of the losing streak, continued against the Beavers. The Sun Devil offensive attack was unable to reach the .200 hitting mark for the fourth straight match.
Early on, it appeared the Sun Devils had cleaned up the errors that had plagued them in previous matches. Arizona State was able to avoid attack errors and play crisp volleyball in the first set. With Ivana Jeremic back in the lineup following an absence due to illness on Friday night, the Sun Devils hit .429 in the opening set.
That first-set success initially carried over into the second set, as the Devils opened up a 10-8 lead when Carmen Unzue recorded her fifth kill of the afternoon. Unzue was one of the few bright spots for an ASU offense that was outscored 17-9 by the Beavers from that point on in the second set. The Beavers second set run zapped the Sun Devils of the momentum gained in the first set.
“Everything just started falling apart [in the second set],” head coach Sanja Tomasevic said.
In the final three sets, Jeremic and Ford were held in check, hitting .143 and .000 respectively. Over the course of Arizona State’s losing streak, Jeremic has exceeded 10 kills just once in the six matches—that coming in a 15-kill performance in ASU’s five-set loss to No. 15 USC.
“I think we came out strong and confident because we knew what we had to do and how to do it,” Unzue, who had a team-leading 12 kills, said. “For some reason we hesitate… I think we want to see the future and we don’t focus on the present.”
Oregon State entered Sunday afternoon having won just six sets over the course of their previous 11 conference matches. The Beavers picked up their seventh, eighth and ninth sets of the season in their first conference win of the season. This stretch followed a 11-9 campaign against Pac-12 opponents in 2017.
OSU was the only team without a conference win coming into Sunday, meaning the conference will not have a team go winless in the conference this season. ASU is the last team to go winless in the Pac-12, going 0-20 against the conference opponents in 2017.
“They needed that win,” Tomasevic said. “They got that first win of the season and we all know how important that was for us last year and we couldn’t do it.”
With their six-match losing streak in tow, the Sun Devils travel to Washington next weekend to face the Huskies and Cougars. ASU will be in Seattle on Friday evening before traveling to Pullman for a date with Washington State on Sunday afternoon.
To get back on track, Tomasevic said the team needs to follow its game plan, something they have failed to do in their losses this year.
“I’m truly disappointed in how our girls are playing lately and it just can’t be like that,” Tomasevic said. “We haven’t lost this season because somebody was better than us. Whenever we’ve lost, we’ve lost because we decided not to follow the scouting report.”
