UCLA no match for UW, USC next

By Ben Miller

Oct 13, 2005, 12:00 AM

Senior Candace Lee continues to dig to the top and so do her teammates. The second-ranked Washington women's volleyball squad defeated No. 22 UCLA last night at Hec Ed. During the match, Lee's 10 digs moved her into second place on the Pac-10 all-time career digs list, tied with former USC player Katie Haller. "I think it's a team effort," said Lee about her feat. "Awesome blocks gets me a lot of touches, and I think that our system puts me right in the middle of the court where most of the balls go." The Huskies (15-0 overall, 6-0 Pac-10) remained undefeated with the 3-0 sweep yesterday, and UCLA (9-6, 2-4) dropped its sixth match to a top-25 opponent this season. "We beat a good team," coach Jim McLaughlin said. "I thought we played well. I don't think we started out firing on all cylinders, but we got it going and we took control of the match." The match started out as a dogfight in game one as the two teams sat tied at 7-7, but a six-point run by the Huskies put them in control, winning the game by a score of 30-24. An early 8-0 run put Washington up in the second game, and they never looked back en route to a 30-18 win. The UW then finished off the sweep in game three, winning 30-22. "We went out there. We knew what to do. And we stayed in our systems," sophomore Christal Morrison said. Morrison led the team with 15 kills on the night and was one of three Washington players to get to double figures in that category. The other two were senior Sanja Tomasevic and sophomore Alesha Deesing with 14 and 10, respectively. Courtney Thompson led the offense as she finished the night with 41 total assists. "I thought [Thompson] did a good job moving the ball around based on their tactics," McLaughlin said of his setter. "We kept them off balance a little bit tonight." One place where the Huskies struggled was their serving game. While they finished the night with seven aces, they also committed 11 errors in the three-game match. "That's a key stat for us," McLaughlin said. "We have to make sure we're not missing that many, otherwise a team is going to get hot." The Huskies continue this weekend's home stand tonight as they face No. 17 USC at 7 p.m. Southern California (8-6, 4-2) was the only team to beat the UW at home last season, as they staved off a Husky comeback to win the match three games to two. It was only the second loss of the season for Washington. USC is led by two players who are averaging at least four kills per game on the season. Bibiana Candelas and Staci Venski post 4.32 and 4.00 kills per game, respectively. The USC defense is anchored by Deborah Seilhamer, who leads the team with 6.11 digs per game. Tonight it is "Pack the Arena Night" at Hec Ed as the Huskies try to top their all-time singe game attendance record. The record was set last season against as 5,712 fans watched them sweep Stanford.

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