The Utah State women’s volleyball team ended a three-game skid on Saturday with a five set win over Wyoming. The win put the Aggies at 1-1 in conference after losing to the defending Mountain West champions Colorado State in four sets on Thursday.
The Aggies rushed out to a two set lead before losing the third and the fourth set. In those two sets the Aggies only held the lead once in those two sets and the Cowgirls had a .333 and a .407 kill percentage.
“The first two games were nice and steady,” said Grayson DuBose, USU’s head coach. “But then they changed their lineup and I didn’t think we responded particularly well with lineup changes, I think it caught us off-guard.”
However the Aggies took the fifth set with relative ease winning 15-9.
“The mantra for us is always ‘the next ball matters, it’s the only one that we can control,’” DuBose said. “It’s such a coaching cliche to say all of that stuff, but in our case it’s really true, we can’t fix the stuff that’s in the past.”
The Aggies had six blocks alone in the shortened fifth set and 17.5 total in the match.
“We’ve been working really hard on our blocking and getting in the right spots,” said junior Elle Brainard. “We talked a lot about that in our film before the game and so that was a big emphasis for today because we’ve been struggling on the block lately.”
Brainard had 11 kills in the game including 6 alone in the first set.
“The middle and outside were pulling the block with them and I was just kind of open so that was nice for me,” Brainard said. “It was a reflection of them.”
A large struggle for the aggies this season has been finishing off games, something that they were able to do on Saturday.
“It felt nice to win the fifth set, when it gets down to the wire like that it just comes down to being disciplined and kind of going back to the basics and doing what we know how to do,” said senior Kaitlyn Vanhoff. “I think we did really well with that and we came out with a lot of passion in that fifth set and especially towards the end and that was big for us. Sometimes we struggle in finishing games and it was nice to be able to finish it out in the fifth.”
Vanhoff led the team with 12 kills including a .526 kill percentage. Other stat leaders were Ashlan Rogers-Court with 18 digs and Paige Neves with 41 of the teams 45 assists.
The Aggies, who finished third in the Mountain West last year are now 1-1 in conference against two of the top four teams from last year. They will play New Mexico on the road last week who finished second in the conference last year.
“It’s two of the top teams in the league I think, that’s how I see it and New Mexico on the road next week is another one so it doesn’t get any easier for us.”
