GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Wahine Jennifer Carey and Lauren Duggins let this Stanford kill slip between them last night.
Cardinal crash Step one in winning a national championship -- play a tough schedule. Then, maybe, you can beat the defending title holders.
Wahine’s party
No. 4 Stanford sweeps No. 1 Hawaii
Game stats
to wreck the Wahine’s Senior Night
Willoughby meets her match in Tom
By Grace Wen
gwen@starbulletin.comFourth-ranked Stanford swept top-ranked Hawaii 31-29, 30-28, 30-24 and spoiled Senior Night for Jennifer Carey, Margaret Vakasausau and Hedder Ilustre. Before a mostly silent crowd of 10,252 at the Stan Sheriff Center, the Cardinal pulled off a rare double in knocking off its second No. 1 and unbeaten team in just over a week.
"They're a great team," junior Lily Kahumoku said. "We were discombobulated. When your blocking defense is off, it takes away your back-court defense.
"This was a good test for us. I don't think we should be discouraged by this. We got whipped by a great team. We were in it the first two games. We made adjustments. Now that we know what there is out there, it's time for us to reevaluate what's on our side of the court. We learned from it."
Three years ago, the Wahine had won exactly as many matches (23) and ended with the same result -- a 3-0 drubbing by the Cardinal, the victors in the last five meetings. Hawaii couldn't erase the ill effects of weeks of facing weaker teams then, nor could it yesterday.
The Wahine (23-1) can't help their conference schedule, but it was clear that playing tough teams day in and day out gave Stanford (24-3) the supreme advantage. Neither team led by much in either of the first two games (the largest lead in Game 1 was four points) but when it got close at the end, the Cardinal were always more steady.
"We've been through lots of these," Stanford coach John Dunning said. "We were up 14-9 against USC and lost. Down there, they were way ahead and we came back.
"When you go through things like that, you start to not worry about it because you're experienced at those things."
Hawaii coach Dave Shoji couldn't say definitively whether experience in tight situations mattered.
"We just didn't make the plays at the end of Games 1 of 2," Shoji said. "We couldn't come up with the digs. We served three balls out at crucial times. Whether or not it's not being in that position or not, I can't answer that."
Four of the nation's best outside hitters took turns blasting by each other. Olympian Logan Tom had 16 kills, but it was the tremendous performance of her counterpart that was the difference.
Stanford sophomore Ogonna Nnamani pounded 19 kills with two errors for a fantastic .630 hitting percentage.
"We had no answer for Ogonna," Shoji said. "We just couldn't block. Not that we didn't block. She was going over our block.
GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Wahine seniors Hedder Ilustre, Jennifer Carey and Margaret Vakasausau reveled in the applause of the Stan Sheriff Center crowd after their last regular-season home match last night."You can't let (a team) hit 32 percent and expect to win a match. We came up with a lot of digs."
The Cardinal wall, on the other hand, was its first line of defense and often proved to be enough. Stanford leads the nation in blocks, but had only 6 1/2 for the match. But they touched enough balls to slightly bother Lily Kahumoku (19 kills, 10 digs) and Kim Willoughby (20 kills, 15 digs), who got their kills but didn't hit for as high a percentage as normal.
"Our lefts hit good enough to win the match," Shoji said. "We need to block a few more balls. We hit 23 percent, that's acceptable."
One of the obvious differences was the Cardinal had more options on offense. Middle blocker Sara McGee hit .471 and had 11 kills, while senior opposite Ashley Ivy added nine kills and hit .368, 100 points above her average.
Hawaii didn't have a right-side attack and its middles weren't set enough to make a difference.
The 54-game win streak -- the fourth-longest in NCAA history -- was gone when McGee and Anna Robinson stuffed Willoughby on game point in Game 1. Hawaii had the momentum in the game with a 27-25 lead, but a service error by Kahumoku started a four-point Stanford spurt that was too much to overcome. Hawaii did fend off one game point with a kill from Willoughby. Maja Gustin and Carey blocked Nnamani, her first hitting error of the match, but the Cardinal got a kill from Ivy and stuffed Willoughby to end it. Willoughby saw two blockers in front of her the entire game and finished with five kills and four errors in Game 1.
Willoughby's hitting woes continued early in Game 2, but her serving and defense kept Hawaii close. Willoughby dug Tom several times and belted jump serves that came hard and fast.
But Hawaii's blockers were fooled more than once by Stanford's offense. Setter Anna Robinson (49 assists) isolated her hitters often, giving them plenty of swings with only one set of hands in front of them. The Cardinal had punched 17 kills through the Hawaii defense with just two errors en route to a 24-20 lead.
Willoughby finally warmed up late in the game and blasted four kills to counter the punches that Stanford threw at her. Her 14th kill of the match enabled the Wahine to hold off the Cardinal briefly at 29-28. But the All-American toed the line on her jump serve -- a violation -- to give Stanford a 2-0 lead in the match.
Shoji changed the look of his team in Game 3 with junior Nohea Tano replacing Susie Boogaard. Willoughby and Kahumoku also flip-flopped, but none of it stopped Stanford from ripping to an insurmountable 15-9 lead in the game. The Cardinal made an exit almost as quick after the match, as they rushed to catch a 10:30 p.m. flight back to California.
BACK TO TOP |
31-29, 30-28, 30-24 Stanford def. Hawaii
Cardinal (24-3) g k e att pct. bs ba d Robinson 3 2 3 7 -.143 0 3 6 McGee 3 11 3 17 .471 0 3 1 Yamasaki 3 0 0 2 .000 0 0 9 Ivy 3 9 2 19 .368 0 2 16 Tom 3 16 5 51 .216 0 1 9 Harvey 3 4 1 17 .176 0 3 2 Nnamani 3 19 2 27 .630 0 1 0 Hall 1 0 0 0 .000 0 0 0 Hucke 1 0 0 0 .000 0 0 0 Schultz 3 0 0 0 .000 0 0 6 Totals 3 61 16 140 .321 0 13 49 Wahine (23-1) g k e att pct. bs ba d Vakasausau 3 0 1 1 -1.000 0 0 6 Boogaard 2 1 3 8 -.250 0 1 2 Willoughby 3 20 9 46 .239 0 0 15 Kahumoku 3 19 6 44 .295 0 0 10 Gustin 3 5 0 13 .385 0 1 4 Duggins 3 8 3 17 .294 0 2 2 Carey 3 1 0 5 .200 0 2 1 Tano 1 0 0 1 .000 0 0 0 Ilustre 3 0 0 0 .000 0 0 7 Villaroman 3 0 0 0 .000 0 0 12 Totals 3 54 22 135 .237 0 6 59 Key--g: games; k: kills; e: hitting errors; att: attempts; pct.: hitting percentage; bs: block solos; ba: block assists; d: digs.
Aces -- Stanford (2): McGee, Yamasaki. Hawaii (4): Willoughby 3, Duggins. Assists -- Stanford (56): Robinson 49, Ivy 4, McGee 2, Schultz. Hawaii (49): Carey 24, Vakasausau 20, Boogaard 2, Willoughby, Ilustre, Villaroman.
T -- 1:50. Officials -- Wayne Lee, Dan Hironaka. A -- 10,252.
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