LARAMIE — There was nothing tricky about the Wyoming offense in a dismal 3-0 (25-20, 25-17, 25-21) loss to San Diego State on Halloween night.
The Cowgirls hit a combined .079 over the three sets in the Mountain West Conference matchup. Wyoming (13-8, 5-6 MW) was looking to extend its winning streak to three games and move into a tie with the Aztecs for fifth place.
Instead, Wyoming struggled to find open space on the San Diego State side of the court all night.
“At the end of the day, we can’t beat anybody hitting .079 as a team and negative in the first set. It’s just not going to happen,” UW head coach Kaylee Prigge said. “I’ll have to watch the film to see exactly what went wrong other than uncharacteristic errors.”
Prigge spent the week preparing her team to slow down the Aztecs’ Taylor Underwood, who finished with 14 kills in a three-set win in San Diego less than two weeks earlier.
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UW fared better against Underwood on Thursday, holding the junior to seven kills and a .208 hitting efficiency. Unfortunately, the Cowgirls couldn’t get their own offense going.
“Going into the week, I was concerned with how we were going to defend Taylor Underwood better, I thought we made some really good adjustments there and slowed her down considerably,” Prigge said.
UW middle Sarah Holcomb and senior setter Kasia Partyka were the lone bright spots. Holcomb finished with a team-high nine kills and two blocks; Partyka added five kills to go with 30 assists.
Following a standout week in which she hit .338 over eight sets, Wyoming sophomore hitter Paige Lauterwasser was limited to eight kills on 30 attempts by the Aztecs.
Shea Rubright carried the Aztecs with 10 kills while setter Sarena Gonzalez dished out 44 assists.
“I told these guys that this was going to be a dogfight and that I thought at their place we didn’t really show up defensively, let them hit ungodly numbers and that wasn’t the key to winning. We needed to be gritty defensively,” Prigge said. “So that’s on me. I told them we needed to be better defensively and really we needed to be better offensively.”
San Diego State completed the season sweep against UW for the first time since 2012.
Wyoming will look to rebound when it hosts UNLV (10-12, 3-8) on Saturday at noon.
