It was a rough start to the current road trip for Idaho volleyball Thursday night when the Vandals fell to Texas-San Antonio 3-1 in a close battle.
It was the first match of a three game trip for Idaho and it started less than ideal. The Vandals (10-12, 8-4 WAC) came into the match fresh off a win over San Jose State, but UTSA stopped Idaho’s momentum by edging out the Vandals.
The Vandals will continue their travels on Saturday when they play Texas State. The Vandals will then travel to Denver on Monday. Idaho beat both teams at home earlier in the year.
Idaho coach Debbie Buchanan said the team just has to keep its focus going forward.
“It’s one match at a time,” Buchanan said. “Everybody wants to win at home. We just have to finish games and finish matches. That’s on us. We were in position to win. Nobody is going to give anything to us the rest of the way.”
The Vandals started the night strong by winning a close first set 27-25, but it would be all UTSA the rest of the way. The scores were close all the way through, but the Roadrunners were able to pull out the next three sets.
Statistically the Vandals out-played the Roadrunners in a number of categories, but Buchanan said it was her team’s errors that cost them the match.
“We out-hit them and out-blocked them,” Buchanan said. “One of the biggest things is when we get out of system we tend to give a tip or roll shot away. We just made too many littler errors at the end of the game. We made a lot of those in the last part of game four when we had the lead.”
With the loss the Vandals are still in the top three in the WAC standings behind New Mexico State and Utah State. UTSA now stands only one game back of Idaho in fourth.
Offensively the Vandals only had two players with over 10 kills. Senior Alex Sele had 11 while hitting a .381 and Allison (Walker) Baker led the Vandals with 18 and was only one dig shy of a double-double. With that performance, Baker has now had 38 consecutive matches with 10 kills or more.
Overall, Buchanan said her team missed an opportunity and will have to tighten things up as the end of the season draws near.
“We just didn’t capitalize on things when we had the opportunity,” Buchanan said. “That’s something that we’re going to have to learn. We’re playing some good teams. We have to finish games and reduce our errors. We hit well enough to win a match. Now, we have to take care of the little stuff.”