Coming off a 3-1 loss to No. 12 UCLA on Friday, the Utah women’s volleyball team fell in straight sets (17-25, 15-25, 22-25) to the top-ranked USC Trojans in front of 624 fans at the Huntsman Center on Sunday afternoon.
USC, the No. 1 team in both the AVCA Coaches poll and NCAA Volleyball RPI, came into Salt Lake City with a perfect 17-0 record. So far this season, the Trojans have beat four teams currently in the Coaches Poll top 25: BYU, UCLA, Stanford and Washington.
“I think that [USC] is a very good volleyball team,” said Utah head coach Beth Launiere. “With that said, I thought we did a tremendous amount of things well. We held [USC’s] Samantha Bricio well below her average, which is big. [Bricio] is potentially the national Player of the Year.”
Utah, who came into the match with an overall record of 7-9 and a record of 1-4 in Pac-12 play, started off the match strong, scoring the first four points of the contest. The Utes, wearing pink jerseys for their annual Power of Pink game, led the first set until USC took an 8-7 lead on a kill by Samantha Bricio, who led the Trojans with 17 kills in the match. The Utes never led the Trojans in the first set again, and USC won 25-17.
In the second set, Utah’s Caroline Sipiora aced the Trojans to take a 1-0 lead to kick things off. However, that would be Utah’s only lead of the set. The Utes got within four points of USC after the Utes’ Adora Anae got a kill to narrow USC’s lead to 17-13.
Mick Haley, in his fifteenth year at USC, had seen enough and called a timeout to calm his team down. After, the Trojans took six straight points to expand their lead to ten points. Utah scored two more points in the set, but it wasn’t enough as USC won the second set 25-15.
The Trojans started the third set with a bang, winning seven of the first nine points. But the Utes briefly took a 10-9 lead after an attacking error by Bricio, and the Utes and Trojans traded points throughout the remainder of the third set.
The turning point came when Bricio killed the ball off an assist by Alice Pizzasegola, putting the Trojans up 23-21. Utah would score its last point of the match to make it 23-22 USC, but a Bricio ace secured the victory for the Trojans, who improved to 18-0 on the season.
All things considered, Launiere was happy with the way her team kept up with the top team in the nation, despite taking the loss.
“We tweaked our lineup, Eliza [Katoa] is out for a while with her knee, so we moved people around,” Launiere said. “I thought the group that was out there did a very nice job at competing.”
Jessie Jorgenson tallied her fifth double-double of the season with 25 assists and 10 digs for Utah. Sipiora led the Utes in digs with 11, while Anae led the Utes in kills with 16 in the match.
The Utes’ next match is Oct. 16 at home against seventh-ranked Stanford. In order to prepare for the Cardinal, Launiere said, “We have to work on the system. I think we are playing really good volleyball right now.”
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