All the progress the Oregon volleyball team made culminated with an appearance in the NCAA Tournament. Friday night, Oregon’s aspirations of advancing were cut short by No. 12 Hawaii.
Hawaii outplayed Oregon and took advantage of the Ducks’ mistakes to win the match in three games, 30-17, 30-17 and 30-18.
In the long term, Oregon (17-12) made strides towards becoming a perennial NCAA Tournament participant. In the short term, there is disbelief.
“I’m real disappointed in the way we came out,” said coach Jim Moore in the press conference afterwards. “Not to take anything away from Hawaii, but pretty much everything we struggled with down the stretch, we struggled with desperately tonight and we just didn’t play well at all.”
The same volleyball team that had Oregon at 17-4, 7-4 in the Pacific-10 Conference, and disappeared in the final seven matches, went missing again Friday night. The loss left Oregon with an eight-match losing streak to end the season. Freshman phenom Sonja Newcombe, along with libero Katie Swoboda, joined Moore to face the media afterwards.
“I think all we can do is learn from this loss,” Newcombe said. “We can’t change it. That’s what we are, fortunate to be able to look forward to next year. We just have to chalk this up to experience and use to the best of our ability next year.”
Oregon loses three seniors in Erin Little, Kristen Bitter and Heather Madison, but gains the talent of Gorana Maricic, who redshirted this season after transferring from Northwood University. Oregon welcomes a highly touted recruiting class, including Heather Meyers, a 5-foot-11-inch outside hitter from Temecula Oak High in California. Six-foot-1 setter Sarah Cawrse arrives from Rocky Mountain High in Fort Collins, Colo. and Lana Zielke, a 6-foot-4-inch middle blocker, from Gresham High rounds out the class.
Oregon’s immediate focus was on Hawaii, and the Wahine took it to Oregon with a 30-17 game one win. Game two ended with an identical 30-17 score and in game three, Oregon added a point in a 30-18 defeat.
The media raised the question: Did Oregon’s young roster get overwhelmed by the reality of the NCAA Tournament?
“I wasn’t focused on that,” Newcombe said. “I was focused on the play at hand. That wasn’t even in my mind as we were playing. We treated it like any other match we had all season. We were ready to go and ready to get out there. We just struggled. Now, it obviously hits us that this is the Tournament and you can’t struggle like that and so, it hit us now.”
Oregon hit had a .000 hitting percentage in games one and two. In game three, Oregon slid to a minus .028 hitting percentage.
“Nobody could find the block to be able to hit around it, we just hit basically right into it and we passed very poorly, something that we’ve done pretty much all year long,” Moore said. “We just couldn’t cope with a lot of different things. I’m just disappointed in that regard because I know that we can play significantly better than that. Whether we’d have a chance of beating them or not, who knows. But playing that way I know we don’t.”
On defense, Oregon had zero solo blocks, compared to Hawaii’s four, and six block assists to Hawaii’s 34. Hawaii’s Kari Gregory had a school-record 13 of those block assists.
Newcombe and Mira Djuric tied for the team high with seven kills apiece.
Hawaii, meanwhile, put together a potent attack behind Jamie Houston, who had 15 kills. Former Oregon Duck Sarah Mason, who transferred in spring 2005, had eight kills and three service aces.
“I don’t think there was any doubt that was our best match of the year,” Hawaii coach Dave Shoji said. “Every phase of the game was on tonight, especially our blocking. Jamie Houston had a terrific night as well as our other blockers.”
[email protected]