ASU Volleyball: Sun Devils swept by UCLA in return home

(Photo via Brendan O’Keeffe/WCSN)

After spending five weeks on the road, Arizona State women’s volleyball (8-9, 2-3 Pac-12) was dreaming about coming home. On Friday night, the Sun Devils instead had a nightmare.

In its return to Tempe, ASU was swept by UCLA (7-7, 1-4 Pac-12) convincingly to give the Bruins their first win in Pac-12 Conference play (25-15, 25-18, 25-21). The sweep left head coach Sanja Tomasevic disappointed in her squad’s effort.

“I would love for us to decide what kind of team we’re going to be,” Tomasevic said. “It’s a little bit up and down. We’ve shown up sometimes like this … none of us are used to having a team that just doesn’t want to fight, or is not fighting.”

One area where the Sun Devils have seemed to lack fight is in the first set. In the first set of each conference match this season, ASU has yet to win the opening set and has been outscored 125-96, losing the opening frame by an average of 5.9 points per game.

The trend continued on Friday night as the Sun Devils were squashed in the first set 25-15. UCLA jumped out to a commanding lead by targeting senior outside hitter Iman Isanovic with its serves. The Bruins got off to a 6-2 start and never looked back, extending their lead to 19-9 and finishing at 25-15.

Tomasevic and her staff have noticed the consistent issue and have tried getting the unit ready right off the jump, but the attempts have gone to no avail.

“We restructured the way we practice,” Tomasevic said. “Literally from the moment they are done with the warm up, we go in straight into a really hard drill right off the bat to make sure that we can kind of get used to that whole, ‘Let’s wake up right away.'”

Another area where ASU was outmatched was at the service line. Both teams had nine service errors, but the Sun Devils could not convert a single ace compared to the Bruins’ six.

Offensively, ASU never got into a solid rhythm. Nearly every time the Sun Devils would score a point, they would give the serve right back with an error. Junior outside hitter Marta Levinska led ASU with 11 kills, followed closely by Isanovic with 10. Senior setter Shannon Shields started her second straight match following her career-best game at Oregon State and led the team with 20 assists.

Another woe for ASU was at the net, where the Sun Devils were out-blocked by the Bruins 10-4. Even with the shuffling of several defensive specialists – at one point having three on the court together – in the match, ASU allowed 37 kills on a massive .347 hitting percentage.

With several struggles present, Tomasevic emphasized the Sun Devils’ passing as a major culprit.

“Nobody was passing good on our team, like not one person was passing well, so we, as a team, passed at maybe 20%. So it’s tough to win any games with that. And they were passing dimes on the other side.”

ASU will look to bounce back with a win over USC (11-4, 4-1 Pac-12) this Sunday at 1 p.m. MST.