No. 5 Stanford Takes Volleyball Win

STANFORD, Calif. -- The Washington State volleyball team (17-13 overall, 4-13 Pac-12) lost at No. 5 Stanford (22-5 overall, 15-3 Pac-12) with set scores of 25-14, 25-15, and 26-24.

Cougar freshmen Kyra Holt and Emmy Allen combined for 22 of WSU’s 33 kills. Holt had 13 kills, six digs, two blocks and two aces. Allen had nine kills and hit .348. Haley MacDonald had 15 assists and three blocks. Kate Sommer led the match with 15 digs and had a pair of aces while Tani Stephens added 11 digs. Chelsey Bettinson contributed two kills and two blocks in the third set.

The Cardinal were led by Jordan Burgess’ 13 kills and Rachel Williams had 11 kills and 11 digs. Carly Wopat led the match with four blocks and Inky Ajanaku chipped in three more blocks. Stanford hit .373 and held WSU to a .198 hitting percentage.

The Cougars had another strong third-set showing. Behind 21-12, WSU went on a 9-1 run to tie the set at 22. Stanford took the lead at 23-22 but Holt scored to knot the set at 23. Allen landed a cross court kill to put WSU up 24-23 with Lum serving for set point. MacDonald was called in the net and the score was tied at 24. Williams scored the next two attacks and the home team won 26-24.

“(In the third set) we started blocking better and Chelsey Bettinson did a nice job going in and mixing things up a little bit. We were serving really tough so that helped us out but couldn’t quite get it,” WSU Head Coach Jen Greeny said. “Stanford is a great team and very disciplined with great players. They have so many weapons and we definitely couldn’t slow down their middles in those first two sets. We came back and did some good things in the third. It was nice to see our freshmen perform as well as they did especially Emmy and Kyra. I thought we did some good things tonight. I thought we passed well and blocking picked up and we served well. We’re going to have to take those things into Sunday.”

WSU travels to Berkeley to take on No. 23 California (17-9 overall, 10-7 Pac-12) Sunday in an 11 a.m. match. No. 3 Washington held on to defeat Cal, 3-2, Friday night.