The Cougs played tough, but they could not find the clutch plays necessary to take down the top Pac-12 team the Stanford Cardinal.

WSU volleyball (15-7, 7-4 Pac-12) fell in a tough home match against the No. 8 Stanford Cardinal 3-0 (25-23, 25-22, 25-22). It was the first rematch of the season for the team, as they also fell on the road at the beginning of the season 3-1 (25-19, 16-25, 25-15, 25-23).

The loss snapped an extended home winning streak for the Cougs that dated back to last season, but it was a close match throughout. It was also the first match that the team played following assistant coach Burdette Greeny announcing his cancer diagnosis.

WSU recognized the 2002 volleyball team that had made it to the Elite Eight during the 2002 NCAA tournament, a team in which Jen Greeny was the assistant coach.

“It’s always fun to have alumni come back, especially that was such a successful group and I got to be a part of that,” head coach Jen Greeny said.

Throughout the match, the Cougs never gave up and were in it throughout, however, they just were not able to get the points when they mattered most. Whenever it seemed like the team had a momentum play, the Cardinal was immediately able to come back and win the next point.

“Tonight it really showed that whenever we aren’t doing the little things right in our game, we start breaking down,” senior libero Karly Basham said.

Even though the match was tightly contested throughout, WSU would not get their first lead of any set until the third and final set when they would take an 8-7 lead. Even though they were never able to maintain a lead or even secure one in the first two sets, there was a total of 17 times throughout the match.

Despite the loss, there are many positive takeaways from this match for WSU, first of all, Stanford is one of the best teams in the nation and with a few more plays, the Cougs could have won any of these sets. Secondly, the team out-blocked the Cardinal 12-10 and was relatively able to limit errors.

In terms of personal performances, Magda Jehlarova was spectacular. She only committed a single error on 26 total attacks while tallying 12 kills to tie for the team lead, her .423 hit percentage was by far the highest on the team and throughout the match, she looked strong.

Argentina Ung had 30 assists and eight digs, but struggled to get anything going on her attacks, as she hit .000 on seven total attacks.

The difference between the teams was minute, but the defense and clutchness of Stanford were able to push them over the hump to take the win in Bohler.

“Win or lose, we want to thank our fans for coming out and thank the band in general. Win or lose we are all still a Cougar family,” Basham said.

On Sunday, the Cougs swept California 3-0. Next, they head on the road to take on Oregon and Oregon State.