Volleyball: CU Volleyball’s California Road Trip
CU volleyball had back-to-back weekends in California. Starting in the south, the Buffs played UCLA on Oct. 8 and USC on Oct. 10, then moved up North to play Cal on Oct. 15 and Stanford on Oct. 17. The California weekends resulted in one win against Cal and three losses against the others.
UCLA
CU Buffs lost to UCLA in Los Angeles 3-0. The Bruins had a strong .406 hitting percentage throughout the game and the Buffs were outhit 49 to 28 kills.
However, that didn’t stop the Buffs from fighting their hardest and having 14 student athletes play in the match which is almost the whole team. During the game, Jenna Ewert had 20 assists, 9 digs and three kills. Maya Tabron had Alexia Kuehl had three kills, Jahara Campbell had four and Jill Schneggenburger had seven kills. Meegan Hart played a great game with a .313 hitting average and a total of 7 kills.
Brynna DeLuzio led the defense with 11 digs. Kuehl and Campbell each had a pair of blocks. Even though the Buffs didn’t win this game, they still fought hard, with various assists, kills, and amazing defense.
USC
They then went on the play Sunday night at home against USC and unfortunately lost 3-0. CU is ranked 24th in Pac-12 and has not won a game at the Galen Center yet.
The Trojans won in the end by having a huge comeback in the fourth set with four attackers and double-digit kills. They also had 10 service aces and had eight blocks compared to Cu’s 3 blocks.
After a slow start to the game, the Buffs picked up some momentum. Maya Tabron had 18 kills, which led to her career high, hitting a .213 percentage. Tabron also had a double-double 16 digs tying her with Brynna DeLuzio with the most on the team. Jahara Campbell had a good game as well, ending with 13 kills and a .250 hitting percentage. Meegan Hart had 10 kills and a .400 hitting percentage and Alexia Kuehl had 6 kills. Overall the team had a killer game with 16 total kills with a combined .419 hitting percentage.
Jenna Ewart nailed it on defense with 40 assists, 11 digs and a pair of blocks. This is Ewart’s 38th career double-double, moving her to 11th in CU Volleyball history. Hart ended up finishing with a team-best of three blocks. Even though Jill Sshneggenburger had an off game hitting, however, she still managed 11 digs and had an ace.
“Certainly a tough match given we were in position to win set two and were playing well in set three,” Head Coach Jesse Mahoney said. “We put ourselves in a tough spot at the start of the fourth but played great volleyball to come back and almost steal it. Though we lost the match I was proud of the response our team showed after our match Friday – but these are the type of matches we need to win moving forward.”
Colorado finished the game with a hitting percentage of .234 and the Trojans had a percentage of .265. Overall, a great game fought by the CU Volleyball team. They had a killer game with a great offense and defense leading to some career double-doubles and making their mark in CU history.
Cal
The Buffs traveled to Berkeley, California and played a strong defensive game against the Golden Bears at the Haas Pavilion winning 3-0. The Buffs led the defensive battle with 13 total blocks with four Buffs having 4 or more blocks.
Maya Tabron had an incredible game offensively and defensively with 13 kills on a .310 hitting percentage, 5 digs, and 6 blocks including 2 solo blocks. She was the only hitter with double digit kills. Jill Schneggenburger had a great game with 6 kills as well as Alexia Kuehl and Meegan Hart with five kills. Hart had a team-best .364 hitting percentage while both Kuehl and Schneggenburger had greater than .230 percentage.
The Buffs defense was so strong that only one Golden Bear had a hitting percentage greater than .200. Hart also had a total of 6 blocks, Schneggenburger had 5 blocks and Kuehl had 4 kills during the game.
Briana DeLuzio led the CU Buffs with 11 digs and 3 aces. Jenna Ewart had a pretty good game as well with 24 assists, 7 digs and 3 kills. Colorado also had a very strong service line with 8 aces as Schneggenburger and Savannah Perry had a pair each. The Buffs ended up finishing the match with a .240 hitting percentage.
Overall a fantastic game on defense with some amazing blocks and assists with Tabron having her best blocking game of her career so far. This win snapped CU out of a 15 match losing streak in conference road matches.
“Sweeps are rare in this conference and even harder to come by on the road, so we are obviously happy with the result,” Head Coach Jesse Mahoney said. “We were especially good defensively at the net. I think Maya had the best blocking match of her career- she impacted what they wanted to do offensively and changed their game plan. I liked how aggressively we served and certainly got them out of system which led to a lot of attack errors on their part.”
Stanford
On the last leg of the Buffs California adventures, the team traveled to Stanford Sunday afternoon on Oct. 17 and unfortunately lost 3-0. The Buffs couldn’t stop the Cardinals who had a .345 hitting percentage, 9 aces, and all five of their hitters hitting greater than a .333 percentage.
The Buffs played a great offense with Meegan Hart leeding the Buffs with 5 blocks, Jenna Ewert and Alexia Kuehl each had four. Jahara Campbell killed it on offense with 8 effortless kills resulting in a .381 hitting percentage. Jill Schneggenburger had six kills leading to a .294 hitting percentage while Maya Tabron had 5 kills.On defense, Jenna Ewert had 20 assists, 6 digs and 4 blocks in the setter position. Overall Colorado was at a high point with a total of 9 blocks throughout the game. Brynna DeLuzio tied for match-best in digs with 14 while Schneggenburger had 7.
Colorado had an overall hitting percentage of .149 compared to the cardinals .345, but what really got CU was Stanford’s 6 aces in the third set while the Buffs only had 2 aces throughout the whole game. The Buffs had some amazing assists, blocks and kills from but just couldn’t beat Stanford with the various aces.
Head Coach Jesse Mahoney said, “When playing a team as big and physical as Stanford we needed to serve well to get them out of system and pass well in serve receive so that we can be deceptive offensively. We served well at times but couldn’t capitalize – we didn’t defend well when they were in one-option. Unfortunately we didn’t pass well enough to get our middles and Jill enough good looks to be effective. We did have some bright spots and I was happy with Maya and Jahara taking some big swings. Our upcoming matches against the Arizonas are really important as we finish out the first half of conference play.”
The Buffs come back home to play against Arizona this Friday, Oct. 22 at 6 p.m. at the CU Events Center.
