SAN FRANCISCO — The No. 1 team in the nation had to work Thursday night in War Memorial at Sobrato Center against the Dons, as the San Francisco volleyball team held leads over visiting BYU in all three sets and also limited the NCAA's best hitting team to just .202 hitting, forcing top-ranked BYU to have to battle back to earn a 3-0 (25-13, 25-20-25-21) West Coast Conference win over USF.


 
HOW IT HAPPENED

• San Francisco (8-10, 1-6 WCC) led 9-6 in the first set, forcing BYU to call a timeout. The Dons held the Cougars (17-0, 7-0 WCC) to just .133 hitting through the match's first 15 points. USF scored four straight points before BYU had to try and stop the roll, getting kills from Marjolijn Oskam, a service ace from McKenna Marshall and two BYU attack errors.
   
• But BYU straightened itself out after the timeout, scoring five consecutive points in part due to four straight USF errors, and later scored nine more in a row as part of a 19-4 run to close out the set and win 25-13, taking a 1-0 lead in the match.
   
• The Dons pushed the Cougars for much longer in the second set. USF went on a quick 4-0 run early to tie it at 10-10 thanks to back-to-back blocks from Oskam and Sophie Sydenham, and Katie Wagstaff and Sydenham. Later, consecutive kills by Sydenham and Victoria Rogers made it a 6-1 stretch and a 12-11 USF lead. The Dons weren't finished there, either. After the Cougars regained a 14-12 lead with three straight points, USF took a 16-15 advantage with three straight points of its own, riding back-to-back kills from Emily Zinger. But BYU would score six of the last eight points in the set to pull away from what was a 19-18 score and win the set, 25-20.
   
• San Francisco made sure BYU knew it wasn't going anywhere in the third set as well. Despite being down 2-0 in the match to the No. 1-ranked team in the country, USF came out and staked itself to an early 4-1 lead. Even after BYU took a four-point lead at 14-10, the Dons came back again with four straight points to tie it at 14-14. Kills by Sydenham and Rogers sandwiched two BYU errors and the Dons were back in business. The set would be tied five more times after that, but it was again the Cougars who were able to prevail in the end, pulling away from a 20-20 tie by scoring five of the last six points to win 25-21 and complete the sweep.

COACH LAVRISHA QUOTES

• (The match) was good for us, it was really good for us. Our goal was to just throw everything we had at them, so then when we leave the gym we feel like, 'Yeah, we've done everything we can.' And I feel like we were close to that. If we could've just made a couple more plays, then all the sudden everything would've been different.
   
• It was so good for us to go through that, experience it and have to deal with all those feelings, like, 'Oh, we can play with them! What?!' So I thought we did a fantastic job tonight. 

NOTABLE NUMBERS

• .202: The Dons held the Cougars to just .202 hitting Thursday. BYU has not hit below .300 since Sept. 7 versus then-No. 10 USC, and it was its lowest hitting percentage since hitting .162 versus in the season opener versus Utah Valley on Aug. 18.
• 10: Zinger logged a team-high 10 kills for the Dons. It was her second straight match with double-digit kills after going eight straight matches with no more than nine.
• 21: Anna Dalla Vecchia logged a match-high 21 digs. It was her first 20-digs performance in conference play and her first since also having 21 versus UC Riverside on Sept. 15.

COMING UP

• USF hosts defending WCC champion San Diego on Saturday. The match marks the Dons' annual "Dig Pink" game, where the Dons will honor Breast Cancer Awareness month with pink warm-up shirts. Pink shirts will also be given to the first 100 fans in attendance.
   
• Fans can purchase tickets and find all live coverage links on USFDons.com.