BOULDER – The Colorado women’s volleyball team (9-7, 1-4 Pac-12) ended their first home match of the weekend with a fall to No. 5 Oregon (14-2, 4-1 Pac-12) in a three-set sweep (18-25, 19-24, 21-25) here Friday night.
The Buffs were led offensively by outside hitters Lexi Hadrych and Maya Tabron as well as middle blocker Skyy Howard, all three of them earning eight kills.
Howard reached 500 career kills while posting eight tonight on 21 attempts to hit a .333 attacking percentage and earned five total blocks against Oregon.
Colorado struggled to take down Oregon’s Gabby Gonzales. She led the Duck’s to their 3-0 sweep against the Buffs, showing thirteen kills on 23 attempts to hit an impressive .435 hitting percentage.
The Buffs will look to come back strong and end their weekend on a high note when they host Oregon State at 12 p.m. Sunday.
HOW IT HAPPENED:
SET ONE: The opening set saw an early lead from the Buffs at 9-6 but ended in a 25-18 fall to the Ducks. Lexi Hadrych highlighted with three kills while Howard and Tabron posted two kills each.
SET TWO: After being down 4-0, it quickly turned into a back-and-forth battle between the two teams. CU put things into gear and fought back after a kill from Howard to put the Buffs up 7-6. However, the Buffs trailed to the Ducks for the remainder of the match, falling 25-19.
SET THREE: The Ducks took an early 8-3 lead; however, the Buffs were able to close the gap, taking the score from 9-4 to a tied 9-9 on a five point run. This was highlighted by Hadrych’s seventh kill of the match. Back-to-back blocks were posted by the duo of Cayla Payne and Kendall Meller as well as Howard to get CU closer to Oregon; however, the Buffs fell short, ending the third set 25-21.
Quotes:
Head Coach Jesse Mahoney
Oregon is obviously very good, and they’re ranked very high. Oregon is another team in our conference that I think is a legitimate Elite Eight, Final Four team. We enjoy playing matches like this and they’re great, great tests for where we are. I told the team a lot of that result [the loss] is within our control, which is a good thing. I think we have it within us to be a little bit better at some things. Not just serving, passing, attacking, but systematic things as well. So, the difference in the match, and certainly high-level matches, is usually…
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