Volleyball: Improved Cougars regroup after 0-2 trip

Washington State University second-year coach Andrew Palileo has overseen one of the biggest turnarounds in college volleyball.

Even with last week’s 0-2 road trip, the Cougars have won 14 matches, four more than in 2008, and three Pac-10 matches, equaling last year’s total.

Two-thirds of the conference season still remains. WSU cracked the national rankings for the first time since the 2003 preseason poll before dropping out following losses to current No. 5 Stanford and No. 14 California last week.

Palileo admits he’s a bit surprised by WSU’s start, but “only from the standpoint that we’ve won in different ways. I thought if we were getting ahead in matches we were good enough to stay ahead, but we’ve fallen behind and come back. We were down 24-19 in the third set against Arizona and came back and won 26-24.

“I did have a number of wins in mind for the season and we’re pretty much on track.”

That number? “I gave the girls a locker-room combination for the numbers (win-loss) that I thought would get us into the NCAAs,” Palileo said.

Six Pac-10 teams made the NCAA tournament a year ago. This season, Palileo expects more invitations, possibly as many as nine. WSU hasn’t been to the NCAAs since 2002.

Palileo wants his players to enjoy their success but remain driven and hungry.

“One of the things we didn’t do a good job of is refocusing the team,” he said. “I sensed in last week’s practices a sense of accomplishment and that’s good for us, but I didn’t feel we had the hunger we needed to compete with those teams.”

A balanced attack has helped WSU climb into a tie for fourth in the Pac-10, where every team has at least one loss.

The Cougars don’t have a player in the conference’s top 10 in kills, but as of last week they were the only team with five players with 100 or more kills. Senior Jackie Albright leads the way with 192, followed by Meagan Ganzer at 161, Cassie Robbins and Brittany Tillman at 152 and Rachel Todorovich at 138.

Setter Renee Bordelon is third in the Pac-10 and 10th nationally at 11.72 assists per set.

The Cougars entertain No. 16 USC on Friday and No. 12 UCLA on Saturday. Both matches start at 7 p.m.

“I’m driving the team crazy because every match is like a defining match,” Palileo said. “We’re at home for three straight (Washington visits Oct. 23) and we really have to take advantage because if we don’t win a couple of these it can turn ugly in this conference pretty quick.”

Bulldogs hit the road

Gonzaga (6-10) is off to 2-1 start in the West Coast Conference with wins over Portland and Loyola Marymount and a narrow loss to Pepperdine.

“The level of play has gotten better,” first-year coach Dave Gantt said. “We’re encouraged; we’re certainly not satisfied. Each week we compete there are things we need to work on. We’ve kept everybody pretty healthy and we have a core group of kids that have been gelling pretty well.”

Junior Caitlin Cozad, a 5-foot-10 middle blocker, leads the WCC in total blocks with 77.

Gantt recently went to a 6-2 offense with Denise Van de Mortel and Kelsey Bashaw setting.

“It gives us some options that are effective right now,” said Gantt, whose team visits San Francisco (7-9, 1-2) tonight and Santa Clara (10-8, 0-3) on Saturday.

Notes

Community Colleges of Spokane (20-8, 7-0 NWAACC East) is in first place halfway through the conference season. The Sasquatch host an eight-team crossover tournament Friday and Saturday. … The latest installment of the North Idaho College-College of Southern Idaho rivalry takes place Saturday in Twin Falls. NIC, which dropped to No. 3 the NJCAA rankings after losing to No. 5 Salt Lake last week, has won two of three meetings. CSI climbed from No. 3 to No. 1 in the poll. … Whitworth (7-12, 3-5) has rebounded from a slow Northwest Conference start with three consecutive wins. The Pirates will try to avenge earlier home losses to Willamette and Linfield this weekend. … Eastern Washington’s loss to Portland State created a three-way tie atop the Big Sky that could get sorted out this weekend. The Eagles (16-7, 5-1) take on NAU (5-10, 2-4) tonight and Northern Colorado (16-7, 5-1) Saturday. Portland State (17-5, 5-1) faces the same two on opposite nights.