Nov. 8, 2012
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Macey Gardner rewrote the Arizona State volleyball freshman season kill record en route to helping the Sun Devils sweep Oregon State on Thursday night. ASU claimed the victory in set scores of 25-19, 25-23, 25-20 for its ninth sweep of the season.
Gardner tied the ASU freshman kill record last weekend against No. 5 UCLA and rewrote it to 483 in Gill Coliseum with her eight kills against the Beavers. Other notable performances included Erica Wilson and Nora Tuioti-Mariner's 12 kills each. As a team, ASU hit .346 through the match.
Arizona State is now 17-11 overall and 6-9 in the Pac-12 while Oregon State falls to 13-14 and 3-12 in conference.
Friday at No. 4 Oregon, 8 p.m. MT
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Opening with a strong 8-2 advantage in the first set, the Sun Devils rolled to a 15-9 start on 13 kills. With Nora Tuioti-Mariner and Alexis Pinson tallying their fourth kills each, Oregon State called a timeout as the Sun Devils stretched their lead to seven, 18-11. Keeping its momentum and hitting at a .317 clip, ASU took the first set 25-19 on a final thunderous kill from Erica Wilson.
The fast-paced style of play continued in the second but the Beavers kept the opening points closer with ASU leading 8-5 to start. Oregon State continued to answer ASU's short leads, tying it at 16-all and again at 17-all before the Devils held a two-point push at 23-21 to top it at 25-23 and take a two set advantage going into the intermission.
In the third, ASU built a five point lead, 10-5, to force the Beavers into an early timeout. Tuioti-Mariner continued her big night, giving the Sun Devils a 16-10 lead before OSU rallied for three-straight to close the gap at 17-15. Tuioti-Mariner went on to tally her third double-double of the year with 12 kills and 10 digs.
Falling behind by two, back-to-back kills from Whitney Follette and Wilson tied it 20-20 before a key block by Wilson and Pinson gave the lead back to ASU, 21-20. A final seven-point run capped by a pair of kills from Wilson and a service ace from Shannan McCready gave ASU the match with a final set score of 25-20.
Sweep of Oregon State and next up is No. 4 Oregon tomorrow night. Every match counts thesundevils.com/sports/w-volle... @thesundevils
-- Sun Devil Volleyball (@SunDevilVB) November 9, 2012
Notes
Erica Wilson is now 13th in career kills with 1,040.
Gardner tied the ASU freshman season record of 475 kills after Nov. 3 vs. UCLA. With her eight kills at OSU, she rewrites All-American Christine Garner's 1992 record to 483.
Gardner continues to move up the single-season records as well, ranking eighth with 483. She needs just 12 kills to tie for fifth (495) in single-season marks.
Allison Palmer is on pace to rank in the top 10 for single-season assists. After her 39 assists recorded against the Beavers, she is just 15 shy of tying for 10th with 1183.
The Sun Devils improve to 9-1 on the year when leading 2-0 into intermission.
With the sweep against Oregon State, ASU now has nine sweeps on the year - tying a program best under Jason Watson.
Using 12 digs against the Beavers, Stephanie Preach is now just six digs shy of tying for eighth in single-season marks. Currently she has 483.
Prior to the weekend, Stephanie Preach ranked seventh at ASU all-time in digs with 1,312. With her 12 against the Beavers she is 41 shy of tying for sixth.