PRICE – Volleyball lost to the third-ranked College of Southern Idaho Golden Eagles 3-0 on Saturday at home.
In the early goings of the first set, the Eagles stayed close with CSI and even held two-point lead.
CSI would catch fire and go on a 7-1 run to grab momentum of the set.
“A team like CSI is really good at the mental game and there was definitely a momentum change and we worked hard to try and bring that momentum back,” said USU Eastern’s Taylor Ferrel.
The Golden Eagles go on to take the first set by a score of 25-19.
Things got a little bit worse for USU Eastern in the opening of the second set as they let CSI take a commanding 11-1 led by Airi Miyabi’s four kills.
“Our girls got into their own heads and they put too much pressure on themselves to be perfect. When it wasn’t going their way, they kind of shutdown,” said USU Eastern Head Coach Danielle Jensen.
The Eagles would take a timeout trailing 14-2 in the second set to collect themselves and try to get back into the set.
However the gap was so wide in the score, the Eagles couldn’t recover and would lose the set 25-17.
“CSI is a great team and they definitely brought the competition up. They have some really strong hitters and our block could have been better and our back row did the best they could,” said Ferrel.
In the third set the Eagles would have a much better start and got the score to 12-11.
CSI’s hitters would continue their impressive performance and build another big lead for the Golden Eagles in the third set.
They would go to close out the Eagles and get the sweep with a 25-17 third set win.
Sophomore Mackenzie Carter led the Eagles in kills with 10 against CSI.
As a team the Eagles did improve on their errors from Friday to Saturday. Against SLCC on Friday night the Eagles had 30 errors which is twice as much as the Eagles had on Saturday.
After playing two top five teams this weekend, USU Eastern will move forward now to next weekend’s match against Colorado Northwest at home.
“We just got to keep getting better and where we struggle we got to keep pushing. Even though we might not be seeing CSI or SLCC next weekend, we are going to treat it that way,” said Jensen.
USU Eastern’s game against CNCC is scheduled for Saturday at 4 p.m. inside the BDAC.
Fans can watch Saturday’s game and all of USU Eastern’s home games live on youtube.com/usueastern or live.ksl.com.