This was a pivotal week for women’s volleyball. On Thursday, the lady Ducks felt they let one slip away at #6 Stanford, a game Oregon coach Jim Moore called a “winnable match.” The loss dropped the Ducks to 7-8 in conference play and put their post season hopes in doubt.
A day later, some of that hope was restored by hard-fought sweep of #20 Cal, a perfect 25-21 trifecta that avenged an earlier conference loss and put the Ducks back on track for a return invite to the national tournament this December. Last season, Oregon finished second to Texas in the national championship game, falling in three sets to a patient Longhorn team that kept momentum away from the comeback oriented Ducks and controlled the match to the end.
Quadruple threat: Liz Brenner, shown here with a textbook put-away versus Washington State, paced the the Oregon Duck women to a three-set victory over Cal Friday ((Alex McDougall/ Oregon Daily Emerald photo).
In the game against Cal, Four sport standout studette Liz Brenner put on a kill clinic, knifing the Bear’s D for 18 kills. Amanda Benson, a freshman Libero from Litchfield Park Arizona dug the ball out of the wood an amazing 24 times in a three set match. Coach Moore credits Junior middle blocker Serena Warner’s early play for setting up Brenner though, with four kills in the first set that drew Cal’s defense away from the other Ducks and set them up for a big night.
It’s been a long season for the UO women’s volleyball program. The lady Ducks are slapping the ball pretty hard and have an overall winning record, but now sit unranked at 8-8 in conference play in 2013 after losing key seniors Haley Jacob, Alaina Bergsma, and Katherine Fischer to graduation.
The core of this team is the nucleus of last, led by the multi-talented Junior Outside Hitter Liz Brenner, who’s averaging nearly 4.5 kills per set, and Senior Lauren Plum with 750 assists and 1690 total set attempts.
The ladies control their own destiny at this point. Next week they travel to Colorado and Utah, then finish up the regular season at Washington State on the 24th and finally at home against Oregon State on the Pac-12 Network. Spend a few minutes watching and you might be surprised by the physical play and entertained by the challenging pace.
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