TEMPE, Ariz. — The more efficient a team can be on the road, the better. Being clutch with a strong finishing punch doesn’t hurt either.
For the second straight weekend, No. 8 Colorado State took down a ranked opponent to open tournament play, beating No. 18 Arizona State 25-23, 25-20, 18-25, 17-25, 15-5 on the Sun Devils’ home floor to open the Residence Inn Challenge on Friday. It was the Rams’ first win over a ranked opponent on their home floor since 2007.
Colorado State, which has won 21 straight true road matches, is now 10-1 on the season with matches against Pepperdine (11 a.m.) and North Carolina Central (6 p.m.) on Saturday.
“That’s a great way to put it. We came out after the second-set break, and I pointed at the stat sheet and we had two errors and had not been blocked,” CSU coach Tom Hilbert said. “We were down 8-3 early (in set three), we had four errors, had gotten blocked and missed serves. It was a tale of two teams. We started to give a lot of points away and they got in a rhythm.
“Here’s what I think. I think we play volleyball well. When we are in rhythm, we are very effective.”
The Rams took control of the match early with a clean attack, committing just two attacking errors in the first two sets. The next two were a different tale, however, as the Sun Devils stormed back to tie the match.
But in the fifth set, Colorado State was back in control, running out to a 9-0 lead at the start.
Arizona State took more swings in the match by a considerable margin (164-144), but it was the Rams who produced more kills overall (60-52) in hitting at a .271 clip. The Sun Devils’ attack was just .183 as they committed five hitting errors in the fifth set.
“Marlee (Reynolds) was really good,” said Hilbert, after the senior had just three errors on 26 swings. “You look at sets three and four, there were some issues. Deedra did start out-tempoing her own team, but she got it back together at the end.”
Colorado State’s attack was not just efficient but diverse, with setter Deedra Foss distributing her 52 assists between her top four hitters, all of whom had at least 10 kills. Freshman Jasmine Hanna and senior middle Kelsey Snider each had 14 kills to lead the team, while Reynolds had 13 and Dri Culbert 10. Culbert also had 14 digs in the match.
For the sixth match in a row, CSU libero Jaime Colaizzi had double figure digs, finishing with 25.
Contact Sports Editor Mike Brohard at 970-635-3633 or mbrohard@reporter-herald.com and twitter.com/mbrohard
