Cougars Climb To Fifth In Latest Volleyball Poll

Washington State, despite suffering its first loss of the season to fourth-ranked Stanford last week, jumped two places to No. 5 in this week’s USA Today/AVCA volleyball ratings.

The Cougars, 6-1 in the Pacific-10 Conference and 14-1 overall, received 1,118 points in the poll, which is headed by Nebraska (14-1).

Hawaii (15-0) is ranked second, followed by Florida (16-0) and Stanford, which beat WSU in five games last Friday to runs its record to 8-0 in the Pac-10 and 12-2 overall.

Stanford and WSU are two of seven Pac-10 teams rated in the Top 25. The others include UCLA (ninth), Arizona (12th), Arizona State (14th), USC (17th) and Washington (23rd).

Despite having beaten every ranked Pac-10 team except Stanford, WSU had been ranked behind UCLA (4-3 and 9-4), until now.

“At least we finally made it ahead of UCLA,” Cougars coach Cindy Fredrick said of her team’s rating, which is the highest in a national poll for any sport in WSU history.

“But we still have a lot of room for improvement. I want more consistency from my outside hitters. There are times like against Cal that Elis (Arias) hits for .300. But then against Stanford she hit negative.

“We’ve got to have more consistency than that. And when all these kids learn to play the same and everybody is firing away, then they’re going to be real good.”

Fredrick will take her young team on its annual road swing through Oregon this weekend.

The Cougars play at Oregon State Friday at 7 night and at Oregon Saturday night.

Friday’s match with OSU will televised live on Prime Sports Northwest. It is the only live telecast of a WSU game scheduled during the regular season.

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