Volleyball hangs tough in loss to Washington


Even with Sarah Reaves, Ashley Kastl and Sofie Schlagintweit combining for 37 kills, the Sun Devil Volleyball team wasn’t able to usurp the fifth-ranked Washington Huskies Sunday afternoon as they hung tough with UW in a close 25-23, 28-26 and 25-18 loss. The Sun Devils are now 12-11 overall and 2-9 in Pac-10 play while the Huskies improve to 18-2 overall and 8-2 in conference action.

Set one saw the Sun Devils post 16 kills, six by Sofie Schlagintweit, to UW’s 13, but twelve ASU errors and four Husky blocks were just enough to give Washington the edge as Kindra Carlson matched Schlagintweit’s six kills as the Dawgs broke four tie scores and to take the first set 25-23.

Set two saw the Devils saw take the first five points to set the Huskies on edge for an early timeout to regroup, where they came out swinging, led by Kindra Carlson again with an amazing 12 kills and .524 attack percentage. ASU didn’t roll over though as they tied it up seven times while sharing the wealth on offense with five kills from Sarah Reaves, four from Sofie Schlagintweit and three from Ashley Kastl to keep the Huskies on their toes and to extra points which UW was just barely able to gut out with a 28-26 win.

Ashley Kastl exploded on offense in the third set to spark the Sun Devil offense with seven kills, but 11 ASU errors cost the Devils in the end as Washington took the opportunity to grab the lead early without looking back as they took the third set as well 25-18 to finish the story.

After the match, Jason Watson added about the team, “We had our chances to close sets out, but today we just weren’t able to. The team certainly worked hard enough to give themselves those opportunities, but Washington is a great team that don’t allow for many mistakes and they took advantage of the few that we had today.”

Next up, the Sun Devils will travel north again as they set to head to Oregon and Oregon State next weekend. ASU will face Oregon State next Friday and Oregon Saturday night with both matches starting at 7 p.m.