TUCSON, ARIZ. – California volleyball (7-11, 0-8 Pac-12) closed out the weekend in a midday matchup against Arizona (12-7, 2-6 Pac-12) on Saturday, hoping to notch its first conference win of the season against a team that had lost four straight games. Just like many other Golden Bear matches of late, however, this particular one was characterized by a rough first set and two subsequent highly competitive sets that only just fell outside of Cal’s reach. With the help of Wildcat senior Zyonna Fellows’ career-high 12 blocks, Arizona was able to stop their skid and defeat the Bears, 3-0.
Cal scored first on an Arizona service error, but the Wildcats were determined to set the tone quickly, posting a 5-0 scoring run that put the Bears in a hole from which they were unable to recover. Each time Cal earned a point, the home team responded with a vengeance, putting together three- and four-point runs to widen the lead to eventually clinch the first set, 25-13.
The Bears’ offense woke up in the second set, putting together two early 3-0 runs that included two straight kills from junior Lydia Grote and three straight points – a kill, a solo block and a kill – from freshman Sophie Scott. Arizona responded by posting a pair of 3-0 runs themselves to tie up the score, but Cal took advantage of a string of Wildcat errors to pull ahead once more and follow up with kills from Grote, DeJardin and junior Leah Schmidt, beating their opponents to the 20-point threshold. Freshman Mikayla Hayden impressed toward the…
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