Arizona Stuns No. 5 Cougars In Five-Game Volleyball Victory Errors, Overconfidence Pave Way For Just WSU’s 2nd Pac-10 Loss

The Arizona Wildcats’ volleyball team infected Washington State like a flu strain Saturday night. Every time the Cougars thought they were rid of Arizona, the Wildcats just kept hanging around.

And due to the fact Washington State didn’t do a good job of taking care of itself, the Wildcats registered a 15-9, 7-15, 5-15, 15-13, 15-11 upset win at Bohler Gym in front of a stunned audience of 1,374.

Arizona coach David Rubio heaved a sigh of relief when all was said and done.

“I thought in order for us to stand a chance we had to serve tough,” Rubio said. “I think we did a good job of that, and because they (WSU) weren’t as efficient as they have been, all of those things allowed us to stay in it.”

WSU coach Cindy Fredrick said there was a specific reason why the Cougars were inefficient.

“I think we got blind-sided by a bit of overconfidence,” Fredrick said. “I’ve been very concerned about them for a while now. The intensity level we once had has fallen. It’s fallen in the games and in practice. We talked about this all this week, and apparently it didn’t do any good.”

For the second straight night, the No. 5-ranked Cougars (9-2 Pacific-10 Conference, 17-2 overall) played sluggish and allowed the opposition more opportunities to stay in the contest than were deserved.

Now Arizona (5-6, 13-6) didn’t come into the contest ranked No. 12 in the country for nothing. But it looked strange seeing an opponent come into Bohler Gym and win the first game of a match against the Cougars. Not even No. 4 Stanford could pull that off.

The match was also significant for Arizona because the Wildcats sustained a mild upset Friday night when they were beaten by Washington at Seattle, 8-15, 15-5, 15-12, 15-8.

“There’s always a sense of urgency when you play in the Pac-10,” Rubio said. “The competition is so good and spread throughout the conference, you can get beat by anybody.”

As for the Cougars, they did a good job of beating themselves. WSU finished the night with 40 hitting errors and another 11 service errors.

WSU led in games 2-1 and led the fourth game 8-2 when the Wildcats went on an amazing 13-5 run to force a fifth game. In game five, the Cougars had a 6-4 lead, but Arizona took command for good at 8-7 and never looked back.

The Cougars operated in spurts. It seemed like it was just a matter of time before they were going to break out of their slump, but too many turnovers prevented that from happening.

“The passing was awful, the serving was horrendous and we just played really lazy,” Fredrick said.

In the first game, WSU moved to a 7-4 lead before Arizona went on an 11-5 run to take win it. In that game, the Cougars hit an anemic .186 to Arizona’s .333. WSU was outblocked at the net 5-0 and ended up committing 10 turnovers.

In the second game, WSU took the early momentum and raced out to a 4-1 lead before its offense sputtered slightly, and Arizona crept back to close the score to 5-4 before the Cougars were able to finish them off in what was probably the team’s best game of the night.

When the final numbers appeared for the night, the stats on the WSU side of the sheet did not look good.

Going into the contest, WSU was outhitting teams by a margin of .289 to .122. Against Arizona, WSU barely outhit the Wildcats .238 to .231.

WSU outblocked its opponents 53-51 going into Saturday, but the Wildcats flipped that around and did a number on the Cougars in that department 16-7.

All the while, WSU’s All- American candidate Sarah Silvernail may have played her worst game of the year.

Coming into the game with a .382 hitting percentage, she finished the night at .190 to go along with a game- high 13 errors.

“That was a big factor,” Rubio said. “With her (Silvernail) struggling, it forced other (WSU) players to come up and beat us.”

And with the exception of WSU’s Keren Oigman (.500 hitting percentage) and Shannon Wyckoff (.333) this was a game for other individual stats to be thrown out the window.

The Cougars would do well to get that intensity that got them to this point real soon.

Friday they travel to Seattle to take on the Huskies, who are always difficult at home. And then Nov. 3 and 4, WSU hits the road to face Cal the first night and Stanford the second.

The road in the Pac-10 is not one to travel without intensity and potential overconfidence.

, DataTimes