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Takeaways: West Virginia Volleyball Upset Arizona State
The Mountaineers beat No. 9 Arizona State in five with four first-year players on the floor. Texas came back from two sets down at Tennessee in front of 9,226, a Tennessee record for the third time this season.
West Virginia beat No. 9 Arizona State 3-2 (25-17, 17-25, 16-25, 26-24, 15-12) at Hope Coliseum on Friday evening, and the school calls it the highest-ranked win in its history.
Two independent accounts say the same thing. West Virginia's release puts it as the highest-ranked win in program history and the first top-ten win since 2020, and West Virginia Sports Nation, which had a writer there, calls it program-defining.
Four conferences opened on the same night and two ranked teams lost to unranked ones. Both of those were in the Big 12.
West Virginia Started Four First-Year Players
Lauren Duncan had never started a college match before Friday. She finished with 25 assists, Alexis Finnvold had 24 from the other side of a two-setter rotation, and four of the players West Virginia started were in their first season.
West Virginia are now 1-3 against Arizona State all-time, and Friday was the one. The series goes back to 1989, and the release has this as the second ranked win the programme has managed at home and the sixth anywhere.
Reagan Turk handled 34 receptions without an error and had 23 digs. On a night decided 26-24 and 15-12, a libero who does not shank a ball is not a footnote.
West Virginia are 8-3 and 1-0 in the Big 12. Arizona State are 9-3 and 0-1, and have now lost three Big 12 matches since joining the conference.
Arizona State Hit Better and Lost
Arizona State were the better attacking team on Friday and it did not matter.
Trinity Sheridan hit .395 for West Virginia with 18 kills on 38 swings and three errors. Nina Horning, also West Virginia, hit .455 with 17 kills on 33 and two errors.
Una Vajagic hit .152 for Arizona State with 17 kills on 46 swings and ten errors. Noemie Glover led the match with 19 kills at .364 and Aniya Clinton had 18 at .308, neither of them on attempt figures Arizona State published.
Arizona State out-killed West Virginia 66 to 56, out-hit them .253 to .245, and made 25 attacking errors against West Virginia's 19. Eight thousandths across Arizona State's 162 attempts is a little over one swing, and it is the sort of edge that does not survive a fourth set finishing 26-24.
Texas Had Not Reverse Swept Anybody Since 2023
No. 7 Texas lost the first two sets at No. 13 Tennessee 25-21 and 26-24 and won the next three 25-18, 25-22 and 15-11. It is their first reverse sweep since 26 October 2023, against Baylor.
9,226 watched it at the Food City Center. Tennessee's release says that is a home record and the third one Tennessee have set this season, past the 8,212 who came to see Illinois on 1 September.
Torrey Stafford got 28 kills on 66 swings, a season high, and six of the kills came in the fifth set. She had 12 digs with them, and Rella Binney finished the match with a career-high 54 assists.
Texas's third set ended an 18-set home winning streak for Tennessee and handed them their first home defeat of the year.
Tennessee are 9-2 and Texas, who came in 4-4, are 5-4 with an SEC win.
Colorado Hit .083 in Its Conference Opener
Utah swept No. 21 Colorado 3-0 (26-24, 25-22, 25-17) in front of 2,023 at the CU Events Center. Colorado hit .083 on 108 attempts, and Ana Burilovic, their most-used attacker, took 38 swings for eight kills and five errors.
Colorado head coach Jesse Mahoney, in his own athletic department's report of the match.
I thought they scouted us really well and had two blockers up on almost every one of our swings. We got some work to do. The lucky thing is we have a really talented group and I think we are really motivated to get good. I know we can get better as the season goes on.
The blocks do not bear him out and the hitting percentage does. Colorado's own release gives Utah ten team blocks against Colorado's twelve, so whatever Utah were doing at the net did not show up as blocks. It showed up as .083.
Lily Dwinell passed 750 career kills and 300 career blocks in a match her team lost in three sets. Dwinell, asked about the milestone, told Colorado's own release the following.
It's a little hard to focus on that after the game, but I am happy to be someone that this team can rely on and go to in games.
Utah are 9-3 and 1-0 under Alyssa D'Errico, who is in her first year in the job. Colorado are 9-2 and 0-1.
Louisville and Nebraska Swept Their Openers
No. 4 Louisville swept Syracuse 3-0 (25-9, 25-13, 25-18) to open the ACC. Syracuse got 23 kills and made 22 errors on exactly 100 attempts, and were held to minus .161 in the first set and .000 in the second.
Louisville hit .368 in those same three sets and served ten aces.
No. 1 Nebraska swept Rutgers 3-0 at the Bob Devaney Sports Center for a twelfth win in twelve. It is a fourteenth consecutive Big Ten opener they have won.
Four conferences opened and the two results that moved were both in the Big 12. Arizona State and Colorado are 0-1 in it, and both of them lost to a team that came in unranked.
