Broncos lose two in WCC

By Margo Consul

The women's volleyball team suffered its first back-to-back losses this past weekend as they fell 3-1 to the University of San Diego and the University of San Francisco in conference play.

Going into the match last Thursday against USD, the Broncos were one of the two remaining undefeated teams in the West Coast Conference with their conference record at a spotless 4-0. The other undefeated WCC team was USF at 3-0.

During Thursday's match versus the Toreros, Santa Clara started off by winning the first game by a score of 25-23. But San Diego dominated at the net, and the Broncos' offense had a hard time getting around the block to score points in the following games.

"It was very frustrating because they were reading us better than we were reading them," senior outside hitter Brittany Lowe said. "I thought our passing was going pretty well, considering they were a good serving team, but we just kept finding their block and finding their hands."

The Broncos tried to adjust their offense after game two by running a much quicker set in the middle to beat the blocker.

"Our backsets just weren't working so coach said to set the front, set to Anna (Cmaylo), and it worked out great, so I just kept going to her," junior setter Lindsy Davigeadono said.

However, the Toreros would take the next three matches by score of 25-17, 25-22 and 25-22 to earn the 3-1 win.

"They were playing so well, and we just didn't keep up," Lowe said. "They were digging everything, hitting everything, blocking everything and we were just allowing it instead of saying no, we're going to do that too."

Despite the loss, the Broncos did take some positive feedback out of the game.

Senior middle blocker Anna Cmaylo established a school record for career total blocks at 363 during the match. She had a total of six blocks in the match, which was exactly what she needed to surpass the 362 career blocks set by Jennifer Guigliano '93.

Lowe moved up the list for career aces to fourth overall. She tallied four aces against USD, which gave her 130 total.

Lowe was looking forward to using her ace in the USF match against her younger sister, Chelsea Lowe, a freshman outside hitter.

The first set of the match on Saturday started off a lot like Thursday's match, with Santa Clara taking an early three-point lead at 6-3 and had their largest lead coming at 21-16. The Broncos won the first set 25-21.

"San Francisco is really good at adjusting and adapting to the strengths of the other team," middle blocker Tanya Schmidt said. "We went in today wanting to be really aggressive with our hits, not necessarily trying to hit a specific hit, but trying to go for whichever hit was most aggressive."

But the Dons went on to take the next three sets at 25-23, 25-22 and 25-21.

The fourth set was the most frustrating for Santa Clara. They went point-for-point until 18-18, where the Dons went on a 7-3 run to win the match.

"It's always disappointing to lose, but more disappointing when you know you were right there and you didn't grab it," Cmaylo said. "So many points we were neck and neck and it could have gone either way and we just let it slip right by us."

Despite Cmaylo finishing with 15 kills and sophomore Krista Kelley close behind her with 10 kills, the Dons' strong back line challenged Santa Clara's offense.

"I think when a team is that good defensively, we have to respond by being that much more aggressive offensively," Schmidt said. "I don't think we did that as well as we should have, or could have."

Santa Clara is on the road for the next two weeks and will return to home action against Gonzaga on Nov. 6 at 7 p.m.

Contact Margo Consul at (408) 551-1918 or mconsul@scu.edu.