ASU Volleyball: Sun Devils suffer agonizing defeat on Senior Night

Despite holding a two set to one advantage, the ASU volleyball team was unable to hold off a late Oregon State rally, dropping their final home match of the season in five sets (25-19, 17-25, 26-24, 19-25, 11-15).

A night in which the Sun Devils honored superstar seniors Oly Okaro, Halle Harker and Isabel Miller came to a gut-wrenching conclusion Saturday night, as the Sun Devils suffered their toughest loss of the season against the Oregon State Beavers.

For coach Carlos Moreno and his girls, however, having a taste of victory negated by the agony of a defeat isn’t what will stand out after tonight.

“The feeling of being almost there is better than not being there at all,” Moreno said. “For the first time, we really battled; they challenged us and we really challenged them back.”

The Sun Devils got off to a strong start in the first set, exploding for a 5-1 run that seemed to feed off of the energy of Senior Night. Okaro and Peyton Grahovac got going early for the Sun Devil offense, giving Oregon State a plethora of issues blocking attacks on the opposite and middle end of the floor.

After taking a 10-6 advantage early on, Griere Hughes started to find her groove in the flow of the offense, recording three kills in a row to spark a 7-3 spurt that gave the Sun Devils a 17-9 stranglehold of the set.

Despite last minute efforts from Maddie Goings and Mary-Kate Marshall of Oregon State to keep the Beavers alive, a block and kill from Okaro gave the Devils the opening frame, 25-19.

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In the second set, the outside hitters for both teams came out swinging, as Hughes and Kory Cheshire of Oregon State both pummelled balls off of the hands of the outside blockers. With both teams trading points, the set remained close with a slim 10-9 advantage in favor of the Beavers.

Shortly enough, however, the Beaver offense broke out of the dam that it’d been confronted with in the opening frame. Mary-Kate Marshall tallied two kills and a block to spark a 9-3 run for Oregon State in the middle of the set, where the Sun Devils were unable to corral the same digs they made earlier in the match.

ASU responded with a quick 3-1 run to bring them back within five at 21-16, but their effort was soon broken as hitting errors from Hughes and Nicole Peterson gave the Beavers the second set, 25-17.

The third set saw the Sun Devils get back to their successful ways, as a combined five kills from Hughes and Ivana Jeremic gave them a commanding 10-4 lead.

The strong play continued to roll on for ASU, as they ballooned their command over the Beavers with an identical 17-9 advantage.

However, you can never count any team out in the Pac-12.

The Beavers responded to the huge deficit with a heightened sense of urgency, using four Sun Devil errors along with four kills from Goings and Marshall to roar all the way back to tie the set at 20. All of a sudden, it seemed that a excellent Sun Devil play would once again be marred by an uneventful collapse.

Enter Oly Okaro.

With the match tied at 23, Okaro rocketed a service ace off of Kayla Ellis to give the Devils a crucial 24-23 advantage in the waning moments of crunch time. Despite missing a serve and losing possession, Okaro redeemed herself with a back-row kill to close a tight frame, 26-24.

Holding a tight control over the match, the Sun Devils continued to ride the momentum they’d carried over from the previous game. Okaro, Grahovac and Jeremic provided a steady attack for the Sun Devil offense, and they quickly built a four point advantage early in the set.

The Beavers came back to tie the match at 15, but the Sun Devils showed fight by not letting the game get out of hand. Griere Hughes and Oly Okaro proved to be consistent options in go-to situations for Nicole Peterson, and the two teams fought to a stalemate at 18 points apiece.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough.

The Sun Devil hitters seemed to lose gas at the end of the frame, as back-to-back attacking errors helped the Beavers go on a 6-1 to close the set, 25-19.

Going into the fifth set, optimism remained high for the Sun Devils; the feeling of a fifth set was much different than it was a few months ago against then-seventh ranked Washington; the momentum of the flow of the game was still on their side.

Sadly, the experience was not.

Even though they scored two out of the first three points, mental fatigue became a huge factor of the final frame. The go-to swings of Hughes and Okaro had three errors in the midst of an 8-1 Oregon State run, giving the Beavers a commanding 9-3 lead early on.

Despite a comeback effort that brought the Devils within three points at 14-11, the senior night victory wasn’t meant to be, as a Kylee McLaughlin overkill gave the Beavers the set and the match with a 15-11 win in the fifth set.

Okaro and Hughes combined for 43 kills on the night for the Devils, while Nicole Peterson dished out 56 assists along with 29 digs from Halle Harker in the loss.

Although this was the last time Harker, Okaro and Miller will suit up in Wells Fargo Arena, their presence, especially Harker’s, won’t be soon forgotten.

“Anyone who watches Sun Devil volleyball knows that Halle Harker is a leader,” assistant coach Macey Gardner noted after the match. “We have been lucky as coaches to have her be a part of our team.”

Going forward, the Sun Devils will wrap up their season with four road matches, starting next week on the road, including a ranked match against No. 12 Utah and another rivalry match in Tucson against the University of Arizona. Although time is running short on the Sun Devils to pick up a conference victory this year, a promising effort like tonight will definitely put them in a winning situation once again.

Next: ASU Volleyball: Sun Devils look to pick up first conference win on Senior Night

The first serve between the Sun Devils and the Utes next Friday night will be at 7 p.m. MT, and the match can be viewed on Pac-12 Mountain.