SAN FRANCISCO – The University of San Francisco women's volleyball team battled in the first but ultimately could not take a set from the visiting Bulldogs as Gonzaga cruised to a straight-sets win over the Dons winning 24-26, 16-25, 12-25 at War Memorial at the Sobrato Center on Friday afternoon.
 
USF (6-9, 6-9 WCC) hit into far too many errors on the day. The Dons hit .155 as a team with 35 kills on 110 swings, they hit into 18 attack errors. The Bulldogs (5-10, 5-10 WCC) finished with just seven attack errors as they hit .381 on the day with 47 kills on 105 swings.
 
The Dons finished with two players in double-digit kills. McKenna Marshall and Greta Corti both notched 11 kills which was tied for a match-high. However, both the Dons' talented outside hitters were not very efficient. Marshall hit .097 with nine attack errors and Corti hit .143 with six attack errors.
 
Gonzaga was led by Sarah Penner's 11 kills. Kennedy Croft had 10.
 
"This was the first match where we just played poorly from start to finish," said head coach Frank Lavrisha. "We had an opportunity to get back into the match at the end of the first set. We even had some shots at taking control of the match by winning that set. But we just weren't able to do it. After that we just didn't battle.  Gonzaga is obviously well prepared, they were all over us and seemingly they knew what we were going to do before we did it, so hats off to them. Now we just have to figure how we can play better tomorrow. For sure we have to compete better."
 
In the opening set, USF finished with more kills than Gonzaga – 14-13.  However, the Bulldogs hit .242 to USF's 0.15. USF did make it interesting.  With the Bulldogs leading 22-17 USF tied it up at 22 thanks to a 5-0 run. With the set tied at 24, the Bulldogs put the game away with a kill by Croft and an attack error by USF.
 
In the second and third set the Dons were not themselves.  USF managed just 12 and nine kills respectively while the Bulldogs blasted the Dons with 19 and 15 kills on the third and fourth.  Gonzaga also had just one attack error in each set.
 
The two teams will return to action tomorrow at noon when they play the finale of two-game series.