Undefeated Huskies tear Trojans apart

By Ben Miller

Oct 16, 2005, 12:00 AM

Friday night was "Pack the Arena Night" at Hec Edmondson Pavilion, but the second-ranked Washington volleyball squad spent the night packing the net against No. 17 USC. The Huskies (16-0 overall, 7-0 Pac-10) recorded 15.5 blocks in a three game sweep of Southern California. It was the second week in a row that the UW recorded a victory over a team who went to the Final Four last year; the other was last week's 3-1 defeat of Stanford. "We continue to make progress and grow individually and collectively," coach Jim McLaughlin said of the win. "I thought we were balanced in our attack, and it's just a good solid win against a really good team." While Washington didn't quite achieve its goal of breaking the school attendance record set last year against Stanford, the 5,099 fans at the game ranks second in school history and was the eighth biggest regular-season crowd to attend a Pac-10 game. "The crowd's energy was unbelievable," said Brie Hagerty. "It's just an awesome feeling to know that that many people are cheering for you and are behind you." Sanja Tomasevic suggested that the crowd helped the Huskies get the victory against USC. "I think that they got into their head before the game started and our crowd started clapping," said Tomasevic. "The [USC] girls were looking at each other and couldn't believe what was happening." Courtney Thompson spread out the offensive attack for the UW as five Huskies had seven or more kills on the night. Thompson dished out 40 assists in the three-game match. "The way she ran the offense tonight was pretty awesome, and when you look at the numbers everyone got a lot of sets," Tomasevic said of Thompson. "She was spreading it around and their block didn't know what was going on." Hagerty led her teammates with 11 kills but was followed closely by Tomasevic and Alesha Deesing who each had 10. "We were rolling on all cylinders pretty much," Hagerty said. "There were times where I was just in awe of some of the things that we were doing and it was amazing just watching how we were getting our middles the ball at crucial times." On the blocks, Darla Myre led the way as she rejected the ball eight times in the match. Tomasevic and Hagerty each chipped in with six blocks of their own. The powerful blocking put a wide margin between the Huskies and USC in hitting percentage. During the match, Washington hit .270 while the Trojans hit just .062, including holding them to negative .119 in game two. "It's a reflection on our team," Hagerty said of the blocking. "We've been working on our blocking a lot and just getting in good places and having good middles [helps]." Bibiana Candelas led USC with 15 kills, but she hit just .179. Defensively, Deborah Seilhamer and Nena Siljegovic both finished in double digits. They had 20 and 10 respectively. The Huskies head down to Oregon next weekend to take on Oregon and Oregon State.

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