Utah’s road struggles continued in Pullman as Washington State swept the Utes in one of their poorest performances of the season.
“One of the worst performances as of late,” said head coach Beth Launiere. “It wasn’t one of our better performances.”
Thanks to a Chelsey Schofield-Olsen kill to start the match, the Utes had an early 1-0 lead, but that lead was one of only three leads that Utah had all match. Even though the Utes hung around and lost 25-20 in the first set, they never seemed to be as close as the score would indicate.
The second set wasn’t much different for Utah, as it was down 16-15, but the Cougars got away from them at the end of the set for a 25-21 win.
Despite going down 2-0, the Utes usually come out and play their best volleyball in the third set of matches. However, that didn’t happen, and the Utes played their worst set of the day in the third.
Utah recorded six service errors and allowed four service aces. The four aces by Washington State were disappointing for the Utes as the Cougars didn’t possess any players with a jump serve. All four aces came from passing errors by Utah.
“We were up and down too much,” Launiere said. “They’re always tough to beat in Pullman. We knew that we were in for a battle, but they were better than us. No excuses.”
Shelby Dalton shined offensively for the Utes, registering 15 kills on 25 attempts. Schofield-Olsen was second in kills for Utah with seven. After those two, however, not much was produced from the rest of the Ute lineup on offense.
“We have to work on our offense,” Launiere said. “We weren’t getting kills, but we weren’t stopping people either this weekend.”
While the loss stings for the Utes, there’s no lingering on the defeat.
“I really don’t know what happened,” Schofield-Olsen said. “It was a big mess. It was too bad, but we gotta move on.”
Utah will next compete on Friday when it takes on Arizona State in Tempe.
 
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