When he took charge of the Oregon volleyball team, head coach Jim Moore emphasized that it would take time to elevate the Ducks to the Pacific-10 Conference elite.
This was never more evident than last weekend, when Oregon’s high hopes of stealing a match against ranked opponents evaporated with consecutive sweeps to UCLA and USC.
Oregon’s six consecutive losses to start Pac-10 Conference play has the team looking forward to facing unranked rival Oregon State on Friday in Corvallis. OSU will be Oregon’s first unranked opponent after playing five consecutive ranked teams.
Even so, Oregon State won’t be an easy win, having beaten Arizona State in five games in Tempe, Ariz. To open the conference schedule the Sun Devils swept Oregon.
It doesn’t get any better after Oregon State – Oregon has a two-match homestand against No. 2 Washington and then Washington State on Oct. 21 and 22.
The opportunities are there for Oregon to win matches, it just has to take advantage of them, Moore said.
“We have to compete every night,” Moore said. “We didn’t do that Friday night (against UCLA) and that has to change.”
Measuring whether they are improving or winning is secondary to getting a consistent effort, he said.
“Right now, we can’t measure whether we’re improving or not if one night we don’t show up to compete and the next day we do,” Moore said.
Kristen Bitter, Oregon’s 6-foot-4-inch middle blocker, said getting the experience of playing in a hostile environment helped.
“It’s really important that we’re able to play with the same level away that we do at home,” Bitter said.
Oregon started slowly against UCLA, losing its first game 30-15. UCLA started with a 9-2 run and Oregon only got within five the rest of the game.
To begin game two, Oregon (10-7 overall, 0-6 conference) took an early 9-4 lead with four kills by Mira Djuric and one from Jaclyn Jones. UCLA (9-5, 2-3) responded with a 8-2 run to take a 12-11 lead that it wouldn’t relinquish.
Game three was much like game one, with UCLA running off a 5-1 start and Oregon tying the game at 13 before UCLA took the lead for good and ended the game 30-24.
UCLA received a large boost from the return of junior outside hitter Colby Lyman, who missed her previous five matches with a bone bruise in her left knee. Lyman totaled 13 digs and four aces. Nana Meriwether had nine kills and had helped from Kaitlin Sather and Nancy Barba, who each had eight kills.
Djuric led Oregon with 11 kills and Jones had six.
Less than 24 hours later, Oregon played No. 17 USC (7-6, 3-2) and again had a difficult start, as it committed 21 hitting errors in the first two games and hit 0.000 over that span.
Oregon lost the first two games, 30-20 and 30-19, improved in the third game, losing 30-23 and upped its hitting percentage to 0.159.
Senior Kelly Russell had a team-high 11 kills, Djuric had 10 and Bitter had nine and an efficient 0.316 hitting percentage.
“She hit … high above the net,” Moore said of Bitter. “We keep trying to tell her that she’s got to make it so that other people don’t get to play with her.”
Freshman libero Katie Swoboda had her second-highest dig total of the season with 24.
Swoboda’s success is part of what Oregon needs to be win in conference play, Moore said. Her success was more impressive, he said, considering she was facing USC’s Debora Seilhamer, who has played with the Puerto Rico’s National Team.
Seilhamer had 19 digs for USC. Bibiana Candelas, a one-time Pac-10 Player of the Week, had 11 kills.
“She played unbelievably well,” Moore said of Swoboda. “We need to win some little battles before we worry about winning all the big battles.”
Swoboda is No. 4 in the Pac-10 Conference, averaging 4.58 digs per game, only trailing Arizona State’s Sydney Donahue, Seilhamer and Washington State’s Jalen Pendon.
“She is really talented,” Bitter said. “The sky is the limit with her, there’s no telling what she’s going to be able to do.”
Djuric continues to lead the conference in service aces at 0.66 per game. She had four against UCLA and two against USC. Her powerful kills have her fourth in kills per game at 4.34.
Setter Heather Madison is 10th in assists per game with 6.73.

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