Volleyball sweeps Cactus Classic

September 3, 2018

Arizona’s Whittnee Nihipali (18) goes up againist San Diego’s middle blockers in hopes to score another point for the wildcats during the second game at McKale Memorial Center on Friday August 31 in Tucson Arizona. The wildcats finished the match winning three games to zero.

Arizona vs. Lipscomb:

The Wildcats had their first game of the season at McKale Center. During the first match of the Cactus Classic, Kendra Dahlke scored her 1000th kill in her volleyball career at Arizona. She is the 18th player in Wildcat history to do so.

During the match, Dhalke accumulated 18 kills. Arizona went on to sweep Lipscomb in three sets (25-17,25-20,25-13). Elizabeth Shelton had six kills throughout the game. Arizona had a hitting percentage of .432 in the match and a 7.0 percentage of blocks. Paige Whipple had 8 kills and 3 blocks and played frequently throughout the match.

Arizona vs. SDSU:

Arizona swept again, this time against San Diego State University, (25-22,25-19,25-17). Dhalke stayed on top of her game and scored 20 kills. Whipple scored 12. Arizona’s hitting percentage in set two was .269.

Julia Patterson had 35 assists in the game. Arizona kept the ball rolling in their game despite two injuries on SDSU’s team which caused a pause in play.

Coach Dave Rubio was not hesitant to challenge some questionable calls in the game that were not ruled in Arizona’s favor initially. Arizona had 8 blocks in the game, Shardonee Hayes and Elizabeth Shelton were a strong duo when it came to defense on the net.

Arizona vs. Pacific University:

Arizona won their final match of the weekend against Pacific to end this installment of the Cactus Classic. Arizona swept the tournament with all of the team’s victories. With a final score of (25-22, 25-19, 25-21), the Wildcats picked up their game after struggling to find their consistency in the early stages of the match leading to 14 overall errors. Defensively Arizona was very solid with 11 blocks. Makenna Martin had a lot of digs as the starting libero. Pacific had 25 errors in the overall game leading to their loss.

After the final match of the tournament, Rubio commented about the tournament.

“We weren’t quite as sharp the last couple of matches as I would like us to be. But I think we’re at a level now that we can not be as sharp and still be successful. Some of that will change when we start to play the teams in our conference.”

Julia Patterson commented on the way the team played “Its always nice to be playing at home, in front of the fans, in front of all the families that are here, execution-wise I think our Friday morning game was really good and it kind of mimicked what we did last week.”

Devyn Cross said, “probably what needs to be worked on the most after this weekend is our blocking, overall we did a really good job but our defense is kind spotty here and there but it’s just up to the little things like ball placement, hand placement just really focusing on the little things.”

The Wildcats will face the Montana Grizzlies on Sept. 7 at 9 a.m. at the Borderland Invitational in Las Cruces, NM.

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