CSU volleyball's defense leads to sweep of Fresno State
The final stats for Fresno State's volleyball team weren't pretty Saturday afternoon. Think the Bulldogs want to visit Moby Arena anytime soon?
With a stifling defense and opportunistic attacking, No. 7 CSU dominated young and overmatched Fresno State for its 13th straight victory Saturday, sweeping the Bulldogs 25-15, 25-7, 25-17 in front of 2,466 fans.
Fresno State finished with 25 attacking errors, didn't lead at any point in the match, and thanks to a string of four straight points at the end of the third set, it just managed to avoid posting a minus attacking percentage, finishing at .000 for the match.
That's the lowest mark Colorado State University has allowed an opponent to hit since Oct. 5, 2012, when Wyoming posted a mark of minus-.028 in a Rams' sweep.
"This Fresno team's very young, their head coach (Lauren Netherby-Sewell) isn't traveling (due to pregnancy) and so they are kind of out of sorts. They hit a lot of unforced errors, but a lot of it is we blocked exceptionally well today," said CSU coach Tom Hilbert. "We didn't just block, we stuffed balls. And that intimidates people and causes them to do things they don't want to do."
CSU (18-1, 6-0 Mountain West) recorded 11.5 team blocks, with senior middle blocker Kelsey Snider providing a hand in seven of them.
The Rams were at their most dominant in the second set, the first time they've allowed single-digit points in a set since last November against Boise State. Fresno (6-14, 1-5 MW) hit minus-.172, didn't score any serving points, and the set went only seven rotations, a rarity Hilbert said he's seen only a handful of times.
Snider, Dri Culbert and Jasmine Hanna controlled the net and Jaime Colaizzi cleaned up any balls that managed to make it past the outstretched hands of the Rams' blockers. She finished with a team-leading 10 digs.
"I think we stayed really dialed-in and aware of everything that was coming at us, which was huge. Blocking was huge. We didn't have to work as hard on defense because our blocking was so great," said Colaizzi, a 2012 graduate of Windsor High School.
The CSU offense, which had to record 21 kills in the third set of its Tuesday night sweep at Wyoming, didn't have to be perfect Saturday with so many points coming from Fresno State attacking errors.
Culbert led the Rams with 10 kills, Snider added seven, and the Rams hit an uber-efficient .429. Hilbert praised his team's in-transition defense, "digging to kill," he called it, leading to a quick and deadly offensive game.
Setter Deedra Foss dished 26 assists, giving way to junior transfer Crystal Young who played a few rotations in the third set and had four assists.
CSU, leader of the Mountain West, takes its winning act on the road for two matches Thursday and Friday at New Mexico and Air Force, respectively.
Follow Xplore reporter Stephen Meyers on Twitter at @stemeyer or Facebook.com/meyersreports.
No. 7 CSU 3, FRESNO 0
FRESNO
15
7
17
CSU
25
25
25
• Next up: No. 7 CSU at New Mexico, 7 p.m. Thursday
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