ASU Volleyball: Sun Devils drops sixth straight against Oregon State

ASU volleyball lost its sixth straight match Sunday as Oregon State won the match in four sets for their first Pac-12 win of the season.

ASU came into the game dropping five straight and the Beavers came into the game without a Pac-12 win this season. However, the Beavers came on top and won their first Pac-12 game this year in four sets (18-25,25-21, 25-21, 25-22).

ASU started off firing from all angles in set 1. The Sun Devils jumped out early and kept adding to the lead as they jumped out to a 22-14 lead late in set one.

Carmen Unzue started and led the Sun Devils offense throughout the whole match as she had four of her 12 kills in set one. Unzue helped lead the Sun Devils to a .429 hitting percentage in the first set.

The offense was spreading Oregon State’s defense tremendously as the outside hitters and middle blockers were both pinpointing their kills so they would land on the court.

However, once the second set came around the Sun Devils succumbed to the pressure and fell again.

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“Look we did the same thing against Colorado. We came out strong and won and they are not going to back off so we needed to maintain this and play well,” Tomasevic said. “We were getting blocked, but we were covering a lot of balls. In the second set that stopped and everything started falling apart.”

The Sun Devils began splitting the points with the Beavers until errors began to build up for the Sun Devils. The Beavers then took a two-point lead and did not look back as they won the set two 25-21.

In set three, Maddie Gongs and Amy Underdown took over the Beavers offense and controlled the momentum.

The two of them combined for 27 of the 52 kills for the Beavers and both of them got a double-double too. Goings got six of her 10 kills in set three while Underdown got five of her 17 kills in the third set.

Unzue kept rolling as she tried to keep the Sun Devils from falling in two straight sets.

“We want to see the future, but we don’t look at the present.” Unzue stated about the team, “I was confident throughout the whole match. I knew what I had to do.”

In set four, the Sun Devils offense looked to be back to how it was in set one. The Sun Devils were controlling most of the set as Alyse Ford and Ivana Jeremic finally became a factor in a game that heavily relied on the middle blockers.

However, halfway through set four, the Sun Devils couldn’t keep the momentum and fire power going as the Sun Devils dropped a few points straight. The Beavers took advantage of the late lead and capitalized to win the match in four sets.

The game was a sloppy performance from both teams as the Beavers finished with 39 errors and the Sun Devils finished with 34 errors.

ASU seems to still be struggling with the errors as they are averaging 31.3 errors during the six-game losing streak.

It was a rough day for outside hitters as Jeremic, Kovensky, and Ford combined for 15 of the 19 attack errors.

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“The question is what is the other reason. You don’t know what you are supposed to do, you are not physically capable of doing it, or you choose not to do it,” Tomasevic said. “There is no fourth reason and you can come up with all the excuses in your head and as a former athlete I know I did, but at the end of the day you have to find reasons why you are not doing it. I am truly disappointed how the girls have been playing lately.”

All quotes in this article were obtained firsthand by Devils in Detail unless otherwise noted.