After a disappointing 621-fan turnout against Arizona on Oct. 13, WSU Volleyball Head Coach Jen Greeny made a plea for fans to attend the weekend games against the California schools. More than 1,120 fans attended the Friday night match against Stanford, and 604 fans attended Saturday night against California.

However, the increased attendance Friday did not result in a victory for the Cougars.

The team dropped a pair of matches to No. 7 Stanford (13-3, 6-1) and California (11-6, 4-4) during the weekend, moving the Cougars to 15-6 on the season and 2-6 in conference play.

The Cougars opened up the weekend with a losing 3-0 sweep by a dominant Stanford Cardinal squad who won with set scores of 25-17, 25-15 and 25-21.

“Stanford is an incredibly great team, very balanced,” Greeny said. “Defensively I thought that our digging was great. We out-dug Stanford. We probably needed to get our blocking going a little earlier.”

WSU played its closest set of the night in the third set, despite being out-hit by the Cardinal .200 to .108 in the set. For the match, the Cougars were held to a .115 hitting percentage, while Stanford managed to hit .282.

Stanford’s balance shone through in their offense, with only one player recording a double-digit kill total. While Stanford’s Inky Ajanaku led the way with 10 kills, Jordan Burgess tallied nine, and three other players all contributed seven kills of their own.

WSU junior Jaicee Harris and freshman Kyra Holt led the Cougars on offense with eight and seven kills, respectively.

Freshman Haley MacDonald and senior Camryn Irwin again split time at setter against Stanford. MacDonald totaled 12 assists, while Irwin contributed 10 of her own.

On Saturday, the Cougars jumped out to an early 1-0 lead on California before dropping three straight sets and falling 3-1. The Golden Bears won with set scores of 15-25, 25-22, 25-19 and 25-16.

“We let them go on too many runs. We really got stuck in some rotations and our passing broke down. We had the opportunities, but we couldn’t put the ball away,” Greeny said. “Give credit to Cal as they made some great adjustments after that first set and started digging some balls.”

California managed three players with double-digit kill totals, while Holt and junior Ver’Leea Hardaway led the Cougars with 14 kills each.

After hitting .394 in the first set, the best performance the Cougars could manage in the final three sets was .162 in the second.