Cougars Stunned Unranked Foe Upsets WSU
The unranked Oral Roberts volleyball team hadn’t beaten any top-25 teams all season. The Golden Eagles actually had just one regular-season game against a nationally-ranked team and lost it.
But in a five-day period, ORU has changed all that. Sunday, the Golden Eagles defeated 11th-ranked Washington State 16-14, 15-6, 15-10 at Bohler Gym in the second round of the 1995 NCAA Tournament.
Wednesday, Oral Roberts overcame No. 20 Loyola Marymount in five games in the Lions’ gym. Unlike Loyola Maryomount, the Cougars didn’t put up much of a fight.
In game one, Washington State ran out to a 12-5 lead, but was basically rendered helpless from that point as the Golden Eagles recovered to end the Cougars’ season at 22-7.
“They were patient, persisent and we had a little bit of a let up,” WSU coach Cindy Fredrick said.
So while WSU let up, Oral Roberts got up and outscored the Cougars 41-18 the rest of the afternoon.
Seven of Oral Roberts’ 12 players are from Brazil or Croatia and have played internationally. The team also ranges in age from 19 to 24.
Without one senior on its roster, Fredrick’s “Baby Bombers” just didn’t have the maturity to put up a fight after being challenged like that.
“We had them down mentally once we came back from the 12-5 deficit,” Oral Roberts coach Revis Ward said.
In September, Idaho defeated Oral Roberts in four games at Moscow. Last week, Vandals coach Tom Hilbert told Fredrick he was glad to have played the Golden Eagles early in the season. It was a team in a state of flux looking to find itself on the court.
Oral Roberts is in search no more.
Washington State All-American candidate Sarah Silvernail sat in a postgame press conference with Fredrick and Keren Oigman. All were just as stunned as the 1,742 in attendance that filed quietly out of Bohler.
Silvernail said the Cougars’ inability to put Oral Roberts away in the first game was something that had been haunting the team for most of the second half of the season.
After a 17-1 start, the Cougars were 5-5 down the regular-season stretch.
For Oral Roberts, the Golden Eagles put a choke-hold on the middle of the court preventing Silvernail and Oigman from doing any damage and held the two to 13 and 11 kills, respectively.
“We just let the outside go and used one blocker on that hitter,” Ward said.
The move clearly paid off.
Though WSU’s Shannon Wyckoff hit a team-high .478 from the outside, teammates Jenny Herndon and Jen Canevari ended up with negative hitting percentages.
Defensively, Oral Roberts may have been more resistent to the Cougars than Stanford was in its two wins over WSU.
Just when it looked like a point was going to be earned by the Cougars, Oral Roberts was sending the ball back across the net.
Oral Roberts gathered 51 digs to WSU’s 40, outhit the Cougars .341 to .231, recorded nine service aces to five for WSU and had 61 kills to Washington State’s 52.
Pacing ORU was Zvjezdana Sirola, who finished with a game-high 22 kills.
Oral Roberts (28-2) will travel to Palo Alto, Calif., for the Pacific Regional at Stanford to take on Notre Dame and former Ferris High star Jaimie Lee.
ORU, a private school in Tulsa, Okla., with no conference affiliation, has played just nine home matches.
“They’re a good road team and they have handled this trip very well,” Fredrick said. “At our place, we had a lot of unforced errors and they didn’t. They make very few mistakes.”
Though the disappointment of the loss cannot overshadow a season that caught many observers by surprise, Fredrick said the loss still stings.
“It’s nice to know you’ve got everybody back for next year, but this year is still this year. Nobody likes to lose. It’s very disappointing.”
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