The Arizona volleyball team entered Friday’s match with No. 7 Stanford a heavy underdog. The Wildcats were unable to overcome a talented Cardinal squad in a 1-3 (20-25, 25-22, 22-25, 18-25) loss.

The Wildcats were able to prevent the sweep by winning the second set.

Stanford led by three in the third set after a pair of unforced errors from the Wildcats. The set was close with Arizona trailing for most of the match until finally tying it up 19-19. The Wildcats fell short in the stretch dropping the third set.

“We didn’t execute the whole time, one of our biggest issues was not having the middle attack,” junior libero Candace Nicholson said.

Arizona’s offense was crippled after the Cardinals figured out how to shut down the UA’s middle hitters. Despite efforts to stay in the running to go 2-2 for a fifth set, the Cardinals kept their lead.

“If I had to do it again, I might have made a couple of subs,” head coach Dave Rubio said. “But I think as a group at the end of games, we’re not playing at the level that we’re capable of.”

This marks the second consecutive conference loss at home for Arizona after losing to Washington last weekend.

Freshman opposite Halli Amaro’s execution off the right side stood out on Friday night, as she had 12 kills against Stanford and put up the highest hitting percentage for the Wildcats in the match at .333.

“It’s obviously frustrating losing but losing back to back a lot more digging into the hear because we’ve been so close but we haven’t been able to execute one hundred percent,” Amaro said. “It just shows that we do need to go into practice and work harder and stay consistent.”

“There’s going to be a point where someone on our team, our team, is going to get mad enough-they’re just not going to take it anymore,” Rubio added. “And they’re going to get tired of losing, tired of losing close and they’re just going to say ‘ok let’s go’.”