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I had gotten home from a business trip this afternoon and hadn't even thought about the game other than to schedule to record it. The PAC-12 channel was showing the 2013 3-0 defeat of UW by Stanford WVB, which made me realize that the game was at Stanford tonight. Stanford has dropped to #11 in the polls and UW was its traditionally strong team, ranked #4. Would the seniors lose their 3rd match at home against the higher ranked team?
Attendance was 2262, which seemed low for a game as important as this (The USC match drew 3492), but I guess that's due to this being midweek. I was painfully aware of how the crowd wasn't helping out the team until the end of the 4th set and into the 5th. And by then, a number of fans had already left (I presume because this was a weeknight).
Tonight, we didn't kill ourselves with bad serves. IIRC, there were a couple of serves that were long but none into the net until two back-to-back ones in the 4th set.
The first set was tight, with UW winning 26-24, never letting Stanford get ahead (Stanford's only lead was at 2-1, but there were 12 ties). Disappointing, but starting to feel familiar. Hayley had 10 kills in that first set, so it was pretty much her show, but with little support (3K by Mereta, 1K by Ivana)
Stanford started strong in the second set. Near the end, we were up 19-8. We were walking all over them and everything looked great. But then, with the score 22-11, UW scored 8 points before we got the 3 to end it. Stanford took a timeout or two in those last 3 points. I was certainly starting to feel the panic of seeing that set slipping away from us, but the rest of the crowd didn't seem to. I remember looking up to see that Hayley had 13 kills early in the 2nd set, and then she was just stuck on that number.Â
In looking at the box scores as I compose this, I also have the USC @ Stanford box scores open. It is eerie how similar the first games looked. Both matches started with identical scores of 24-26 and 25-19.
We were all even at the break and I had some hope, but also with some anxiety (I had been at the loss against USC). The team just seemed flat and uninspired after the break. As often happens with this kind of momentum, UW walked over us in set 3, as badly as we had been beating them in the 2nd. But we didn't have a late-game push and wound up losing 25-16. (We beat USC 25-20 in set 3.)  At some point in that set, I gave up at hoping they could come back to win the set.
Going into the 4th set, we had no room for failure. But we started to let UW slip away from us. From 6-6, Stanford quickly fell behind 7-12. We didn't seem to get any traction into that deficit quickly, still down 5 at 11-16 (after the two consecutive into-the-net serves). Somewhere around there I looked at the live stats and saw us hitting only about .235 for the match, with UW somewhere around .290. But then, Brittany got a kill, and a couple of shared blocks pulled us to 14-16 and sparked some hope. We exchanged side outs to get to 17-19, with that last point being a kill by Marete.
Once again, Hayley was serving. She got an ace, then a block by Marete & Jordan, followed by a UW error, and another ace. Just like that, we were ahead 21-19, and the crowd was back into it. Our remaining points were from a UW service error, a block by Brittany, a kill by Hayley, and a UW error. This time, it was our opponent that was helping us to win.
The game went into the 5th set, with the momentum & energy for Stanford. Early kills encouraged the fans to cheer the team on even more. Stanford quickly got ahead to 6-3, lost a little ground, and then got to 11-8. But just as we fans were feeling like it was going to happen, UW got back into the game at 12-11 and then 14-13. Finally, on our 3rd match point, Stanford put it away with a kill by Brittany.
This had to be a pretty emotional win for the team. They must have been questioning themselves and have felt that they were going to get another blemish on their nearly spotless record at home. Then they pulled the victory out by coming from behind.
But it wasn't a complete victory:
UW hit much better than Stanford, .309 vs .242 and also outblocked Stanford 15 to 10.
However this time, it was our opponent who lost critical points to service errors (Stanford: 2 aces, 4 errors; UW: 2 aces, 12 errors).
While Hayley had the most kills at 25, her hitting was only 0.268. The distribution was 56 attacks by Hayley, 30 by Lutz (.300), 29 by Jordan (.069), 21 by Brittany (0.190).
