Rams Drop Golden Spike Trophy to No. 25 Colorado

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6:30 PM

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FORT COLLINS, Colo. – The pressure was on. With the Golden Spike hanging in the balance, and the last match before Mountain West play ahead of them, Colorado State's volleyball team was ready to go on Saturday afternoon.

The lineup has already faced the Buffs this week, just 44.7 miles southwest of Moby Arena. After dropping the last match 3-1 Thursday, there was a lot to recover from on Saturday, and even more pressure to defend their home court.

The first set looked promising. With the stands full of excited Ram fans, the team jumped on CU early, gaining a four-point lead right off the bat, and Ruby Kayser collecting two service aces.

"Coming off from Thursday, we saw we can beat this team," Jacqi Van Liefde said. "So coming into today, we had that kind of mentality. We know we can do better things than we did on Thursday, so we know what we need to fix to get on their middles more. There was an energy of 'we're changing things' and 'we can take them on again.'"

The lead was short lived. After a long set fighting over the lead, CSU lost the first set 23-25, and eventually the match 3-0 (27-25, 25-22).

The second set showed a new level of intensity. There were 12 ties and five lead changes, leaving fans at the edge of their seat, locked into the point-by-point battle. After 12 errors from the home team, the Buffs took the second set for themselves.

"The match was exciting," said coach Tom Hilbert. "We had a number of goals that we wanted to improve upon tonight from Thursday. One of them was to make them work a little harder on serve receive, so we changed just where we want our team to focus on and I think we did a good job of driving balls harder against them today than we did in Boulder, and you could tell."

The third set followed suit. With nine ties and two lead changes, it was evident the competition was strong. And considering the Rams were not only facing a rival school, but a top 25 undefeated team, there was hardly anything to be ashamed of.

"It's super important to play a team of that caliber, even just playing them, we got better," junior Annie Sullivan said. "I think it's just good getting to play a team like that right before conference. I think that we're learning a lot about ourselves playing teams like that, so it's really helpful."

The team picked out several positive notes. Hilbert was pleased to see improvement on blocking the Buffs.

Sophomore defensive specialist Ruby Kayser collected two service aces and seven digs, both season highs. Sullivan also had a successful outing, adding 16 kills, 16.5 points, and four digs to her stat book.

"Van Liefde and Sullivan were physically dominant in the game today," Hilbert said. "They keep swinging high and hard. Believe it or not, I got on Annie in the second set about some stuff and I looked down and she's hitting .400. She's just growing and learning every single match we play. I am very, very pleased with both of these guys."

Such a difficult and adrenaline filled match couldn't have come at a better time. Nearing the end of non-conference play means the time for big changes has come to a close, and teams need to focus on fine tuning skills.

And despite being disappointed with another loss, the conference play should be reflective of what the team learned against their rival.

"I told the team in the end I feel like we played well in terms of our competitive flow, we stayed on it, we didn't give up long point runs, we played two new defensive specialists today, and they held up serve receive well, so really I saw some real positives come out of this. CU is a good team, and this is good for us to play teams that are of this caliber because we have teams like this in the Mountain West."

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