Volleyball opens WCC play

It’s been a tale of two teams for the Toreros thus far. On one hand, there’s the squad that struggles to pull away from opponents and suffers heartbreaking losses in five sets. On the other, a team that cruises to victory over West Coast Conference (WCC) opponents in straight sets. While the former has been the reality more often than not this season, as the Toreros are 0-4 in five set matches, the latter is what USD expects of themselves. Earlier this season, sophomore Roxie Wiblin made her team’s expectations for themselves clear.

“USD volleyball kicks butt in three sets,” Wiblin said.

As the Toreros began their slate of WCC games this past weekend, both examples of USD women’s volleyball were on display — the good and the bad.

A brutally hard-fought loss to Saint Mary’s College on Thursday night in five sets continued the Toreros’ late-match woes. On Saturday afternoon, however, a dominant three-set win against the University of the Pacific underscored the potential USD has as they head into the most important phase of their season — WCC play.

The Toreros’ match against the Gaels was a battle from the start. Though USD jumped out to an early 4-1 advantage, Saint Mary’s quickly caught up. Like many of their sets have played out so far this year, USD spent nearly the entirety of the first frame either tied with, or trailing their opponent. After surrendering the lead to the Gaels at the six point mark, the Toreros would not lead again for the rest of the set despite tying the score at seven, 11, and 22. Though they temporarily cut down the Gael’s late-match lead to just one point, sophomore Cami May’s four kills and junior Anna Newsome’s four digs were not enough for USD, and the Toreros dropped a 25-22 decision.

The match’s second set was equally hard fought, but this time things swung the Toreros’ way. Similar to the night’s first frame, both teams were deadlocked through the opening and middle stages of the set. USD traded the lead with Saint Mary’s multiple times before pulling away late. USD stretched their advantage to as large as five points behind 19 team kills and 18 team blocks on their way to a 25-20 win.

USD’s momentum appeared to continue as they began the third set. Almost identically to the offering before it, the Toreros jockeyed with the Gaels for the lead through the middle part of the set, once again not pulling away from Saint Mary’s until the frame’s closing moments. Senior Lauren Fuller reentered the match with the Toreros trailing 21-20 and proved to be the difference in the set. A pair of kills from the veteran outside hitter gave USD the lead, and ultimately powered the Toreros to a 25-22 victory.

As the match progressed into the fourth set, it appeared that USD was primed to capture their first WCC win. The Gaels, however, did not go down without a fight. Saint Mary’s jumped out a 2-1 lead and never looked back. For the second time in the match, USD failed to lead at all past the midway point of the set. Though they bested the Gaels in terms of total kills and digs, Saint Mary’s registered 12 blocks to the Toreros’ zero, which may have been the difference in the set. USD would go on to lose by a score of 25-20, the largest margin of defeat of the night for the Toreros.

The fifth set offered USD another shot to close things out, but yet again the Toreros were unable to finish the job. Though the score was tied 10 separate times, USD came up short in a 16-14 defeat, losing the match 3-2. Wiblin led her team with four kills, but it simply wasn’t enough for them to avoid a tough defeat and a conference loss.

USD women’s volleyball head coach Jennifer Petrie spoke about her team’s performance.

“It’s hard,” Petrie said. “I’m so disappointed for the girls, I’m disappointed for the program. There’s so much emotion when you lose a tight game like that, especially the opening match of conference. You gotta learn how to bounce back and keep battling, but it was disappointing for sure.”

Despite the collective disappointment surrounding the Toreros’ defeat, Petrie stated that she was proud of her team’s effort.

“I think that they just absolutely battled until the end and laid it all out there,” Petrie said.

According to Petrie, the Toreros’ loss may have been self-inflicted.

“I think we beat ourselves up tonight,” Petrie said. “We made some crucial errors at times. They run a very particular offense and it took us a while to adapt to that. (The Gaels) are very fast to the pins. We run a different style, so we don’t see it in our own practice gym. They were effective with it.”

The Toreros’ coach mentioned her team being able to “bounce back” following a tough loss. A match against the University of the Pacific two days later afforded them a perfect opportunity to do so. Following a Friday off, the Toreros took the court at the Jenny Craig Pavilion for the final contest of their 11-match homestand, this time against the Tigers, who flew into San Diego after taking on Brigham Young University on the road. Petrie mentioned that the Tigers’ travels may have been a posed a challenge for the visiting team.

“It’s always hard to make that trek,” Petrie said. “It’s just exhausting to go to one place, have to take a flight, land somewhere else, and play somewhere else the next day. It’s nice to have the second game at home against somebody who’s been doing all that traveling.”

Aside from the obvious advantages like their lack of travel, home court advantage, and day off in between matches, USD had another edge against their opponent. In 12 prior meetings against the Tigers, the Toreros were undefeated. On Saturday afternoon, USD looked to continue their tradition of dominance over Pacific, and ended up doing so in commanding fashion.

Though the Toreros ended the first set on top, it began close. Neither team appeared to be in control through the early points, resulting in a 9-9 tie early on. From there on out, however, the Toreros took charge. A combination of errors on the Tigers’ side and kills from senior Addie Picha, Fuller, and Wiblin gave USD a 17-10 advantage. For the first time on the weekend, the Toreros were creating space on the scoreboard between them and their opponent, and had taken an authoritative lead over Pacific, a lead that they would not relinquish for the remainder of the set. They would go on to expand their lead to eight points before Fuller closed out the set with a kill, earning USD a 25-17 win in the opening frame of the match.

In the second set, the Tigers seemed to put up more of a fight. At no point did the Toreros truly distance themselves from Pacific, tangling with the Tigers through eight lead changes and 15 ties. However, they appeared to be playing with a renewed sense of vigor and enthusiasm during their hotly contested second set. At times this season, the Toreros have looked to be playing tense, but that tension certainly wasn’t present last Saturday. Kills from Fuller, Picha, and Wiblin sealed a 25-22 victory in the match’s second set. Fuller discussed her team’s mental approach.

“We’re definitely (focused on playing loose),” Fuller said. “We’re trying to take away the pressure of having to be this awesome team like we have been in the past, taking away that pressure and really just focusing on this season and playing as hard as we can for each other — we’re really starting to focus on that as well.”

Junior Payton Douglass spoke about her team’s energy in their Saturday matchup.

“We were definitely playing with more energy,” Douglass said. “Just being excited about the little things, capitalizing on the little things, and just getting excited for each other, and that’s something that we are striving for, especially going into conference.”

The third set, by all appearances, was the culmination of everything the Toreros have been toward during their lengthy home stretch of matches. For the first time on the weekend, USD jumped out to a significant lead early on, leading the Tigers 5-0 to start the final frame. Though Pacific closed the gap a bit, the Toreros led throughout the set, cruising to a 25-19 set victory, and 3-0 match victory that felt like it was theirs from the start punctuated by an emphatic kill to end it from Fuller.

As it generally is with any win as dominant as the one USD earned last Saturday, the Torero stat sheet was packed full of positives for the home team. Fuller and Picha combined for 23 of USD’s 47 total kills, while Douglass recorded nearly half of the team’s digs, with 19 on the weekend. Douglass spoke about her team’s performance against Pacific.

“We were extremely dominant, especially coming from the game that we had on Thursday against Saint Mary’s,” Douglass said.

Fuller offered her perspective on her team’s win, elaborating on Douglass’ sentiment regarding their Thursday match.

“We felt amazing,” Fuller said. “It’s such a quick turnaround from our Thursday match. We really focused yesterday (Friday) in practice on just being confident and aggressive and knowing that each person is going to do their roles, and then we came out today and absolutely dominated.”

Petrie characterized the win as error-free for the Toreros.

“I thought today we played pretty flawless volleyball, which was really nice,” Petrie said. “We only had seven team hitting errors, we kept high hitting percentages across the board, and everybody really did their job well.”

She cited her team’s defense as a large factor in their Saturday success.

“I think that they did a really good job defensively,” Petrie said. “They followed the game plan, we blocked better than we have, so they really focused in on what their responsibilities were as defenders, and we kept a lot of balls alive, so we were forcing our opponent into making errors.”

As a team, the Toreros see their win over Pacific as something that they can build off of as they continue their conference slate.

“It’s great to have that under your belt, have a little bit of confidence back, have a little mojo, know that you’re still in the hunt,” Petrie said. “And we can carry that forward especially since we’re gonna be on the road on Tuesday at Loyola Marymount, so it’s nice going in there with a win.”

Douglass described the win as a preview of things to come for the Toreros, and more characteristic of the way they feel they should be playing.

“It’s just like a precursor for what’s going to hopefully happen against LMU on Tuesday,” Douglass said. “And it’s just another fresh win into our new season, which is just conference play.”

Though the Toreros split the weekend with one win and one loss, Petrie mentioned that there were a lot of positive takeaways from both games as a whole.

“I think we’re going to be playing some really good volleyball going down now,” Petrie said. “It’s nice to see that they’ve gained their confidence back, after this weekend. We’ve had to suffer through some really tough losses, close losses, games where we wish we could’ve changed a few things, but if they can battle that and weather that, I think down the stretch they’ll be a better team for it.”

Like Douglass and Petrie mentioned, the Toreros will go on the road next week for the first time since August 25, when they traveled to the University of Washington. They will take on LMU in another WCC game. USD returns home Thursday to continue WCC play against Portland at 7 p.m. in the JCP.