(Photo: Zac Pacleb/WCSN)
Despite injuries, lineup shifts, and overall struggles, No. 21 Arizona State is still in line to make its fourth consecutive NCAA Tournament bid for the first time since 1992-1995.
The Sun Devils sit at 18-7 (7-7 in Pac-12). Two wins gets them to a much more comfortable 20 victories, and while they have dropped seven of their last 10 matches, those results should come with an asterisk.
A team losing its best player or a key piece of the rotation is enough to handle independently, but the Sun Devils have had to deal with both issues in losing senior outside hitter Macey Gardner and junior opposite Kizzy Ricedorff to injuries.
Those two players combined to rack up 41.1 percent of the team’s total kills in 2013 and 2014, not to mention the improvements in blocking both displayed in 2015. After going through the process and growing pains of integrating freshmen into the starting rotation and shifting senior Whitney Follette to the right side, the Sun Devils are right where they want to be with six matches remaining in the regular season.
“We’ve been here before,” ASU head coach Jason Watson said. “We know how to respond in November. We could spend all of this time trying to figure out why it happens like this, but it happens.”
October hasn’t been a great month for ASU the last two seasons. In 2013, the Sun Devils went 1-7 in October, and in 2014, they went 4-5. Through 25 matches in both seasons, the team stood at 16-9 overall, so in light of all the changes this season, the Sun Devils are actually in a better spot when looking at their record.
“Coach (Watson) was telling us that we’re in a better spot than we think we are,” ASU junior opposite BreElle Bailey said. “(We’re in an) even a better spot than we were last year, even though it doesn’t seem like that.”
Bailey has been particularly important for the Sun Devils of late. Shouldering more of the offensive load, she has averaged 11.78 kills per match on 29.88 attempts per match over ASU’s last eight games. Additionally, she has looked much more comfortable hitting from both the left and right pins.
“My connection with them (setters Bianca Arellano and Kylie Pickrell) is better than past years, for sure,” Bailey said. “They’re getting me the ball a little bit higher than everyone else.”
That comfort level provides flexibility for Watson, who has used Bailey on both pins in certain rotations depending on matchups across the net. At 6-foot-4, Bailey is second on the team in blocking with 0.94 blocks per set.
“I love switching back-and-forth,” Bailey said. “I love getting reps on both sides. I love blocking on both sides. It just expands what I can do.”
As a freshman starter on the 2013 team that went 1-7 in October, the team’s current standing is of no surprise nor shock to her.
“That’s our team,” Bailey said. “We struggle a little bit in October, and then we come back in November and December and just push through the season, and that’s always how ASU volleyball has been. We always end better than we start.”
However, a player that hasn’t been in a Sun Devil uniform during those tough Octobers is junior outside hitter Cassidy Pickrell. During her freshman and sophomore campaigns at UC Irvine, Pickrell did not play in the NCAA Tournament.
With Gardner out, Pickrell has seen more sets come her way but initially struggled as she failed to accumulate more than five kills in the four consecutive matches. However, she has hit a nice form in ASU’s last three matches, tallying 15, 10 and (a team-high) 17 kills against California, No. 3 Washington and Washington State, respectively.
“Now, Bianca and I and Kylie and I are on this connection right now, which is awesome,” she said. “We can run gos, we can run huts, and they’re doing a really great job of setting right now.”
That relationship was evident against Washington State as Pickrell notched 17 kills and 21 digs in ASU’s four-set victory.
“We need to definitely just keep communicating and keep playing the way that we did against Washington State this last weekend,” Pickrell said. “We had a ton of digs, and we were tenacious and resilient and had fun, which is the most important part.”
And while having fun is critical considering the personalities on the court for the Sun Devils, managing the players physically is now the task at hand for Watson.
“We’ve got to get some rest, and we’ve got to get better,” Watson said. “It’s always this delicate balance of how much do you push and how much do you hold back… Coaching gets to be a little bit harder than it was perhaps in August.”
Of ASU’s remaining six regular season matches, three are against ranked teams, including two in the top-10 (No. 2 USC and No. 9 UCLA). ASU lost to both the Los Angeles schools on the road the first time through the conference schedule, but that was also a team in flux and experimenting with its lineup on a nearly week-to-week basis.
October wasn’t all too kind to the Sun Devils physically nor emotionally, but it seems as though they have gotten back onto their feet and are geared up to make that fourth-straight Tournament bid.
“We’ve had all this pressure on us just because of all the adversity that we’ve gone through to be this team that is still succeeding without Macey Gardner and Kizzy Ricedorff,” Pickrell said. “I don’t think we’ve taken the time to just be ourselves, and when we’re ourselves, we have fun.”
Now, with what looks like a solidified rotation, the Sun Devils are primed to click. Bailey and Pickrell have found their respective tempos with the setters, Kylie Pickrell is moving almost as well as she was before tweaking her knee in the nonconference schedule and the team looks to be stabilizing emotionally.
With the big picture beginning to clear up, it’ll come down to ASU’s ability to stay on task from point to point and match to match.
“We have to focus on the little things because the little things lead to the big things,” Cassidy Pickrell said. “Even the little things are big things. We just need to make sure we are focused on those.”
You can reach Zac Pacleb on Twitter @ZacPacleb or via email at zacpacleb@gmail.com
