SAN FRANCISCO – The UCSB women’s volleyball team opened the USF Powerade/Asics Challenge with a victory over host University of San Francisco by winning the final three sets at War Memorial Gym.
The victory is UCSB’s second in three matches as the Gauchos rebounded from a 25-19 defeat in the first set to rally with victories of 25-16, 25-17 and 25-20 to improve to 2-2 overall. San Francisco falls to 0-4.
Stacey Schmidt, who leads the team in kills and hitting percentage, again paved the way with 14 kills while swinging at a .478 clip. Dana Vargas handed out a season-high 43 assists and Santa Barbara native Mimi Cuttrell, making her first career start for UCSB, had 10 kills and two block assists. Schmidt, a junior, also had a match-high four service aces to go along with five blocks (one solo, four assisted).
After dropping the first set, the Gauchos trailed 4-3 in the second before Charlene DeHoog’s kill evened things up. From there, UCSB went on a 9-6 run. When USF closed the gap to 13-11, Schmidt had a pair of service aces and the Gauchos used three attack errors from the Dons to take a commanding 19-12 lead.
In the third set, UCSB never trailed, jumping out to a 9-4 lead on one of Kara Sherrard’s eight kills. Four combined errors from USF, along with a Sherrard putaway and one of her aces gave UCSB a 15-7 lead. The lead swelled to 19-8 before Schmidt ended the game with three successive kills.
UCSB had an 8-1 lead in the fourth set as Schmidt had three kills and DeHoog two in the beginning of the final game. USF cut it to 13-10 but Schmidt added two more kills and three Dons errors gave the Gauchos a 17-12 lead.
In all, USF committed 23 attack errors and seven serving errors and hit just .154. UCSB hit .239.
Santa Barbara will play a doubleheader on Saturday against Washington State (9:30 a.m.) and Tulsa (5 p.m.) to complete the four-team tournament.
The Gauchos don’t return home until Oct. 1 when they face Long Beach State.
