ASU Volleyball: Jeremic injured in loss to Stanford

Sophomore outside hitter Ivana Jeremic went down late in the second set as the Arizona State Sun Devils (10-13 overall, 0-11 Pac-12) dropped a match to No. 2 Stanford (18-2 overall, 11-0 Pac-12) 22-25, 15-23, 25-21, 13-25.

“It is frustrating when we can’t close out these close games against good teams,” senior outside hitter Oluoma Okaro said. “But we still have a lot to work on and we are still improving.”

The first set with the Cardinal went toe-to-toe. The Sun Devils were able to capitalize on six service errors by Stanford and stay in the contest.

Late in the first, ASU had a 18-17 lead and with a Stanford service error pulled ahead 19-17. However, the called was reviewed and the out call was reversed, tying the set at 18-all. From there, the Cardinal would go on a 7-4 run to close out the set.

Senior outside hitter Oluoma Okaro made a big effort in the set to keep the Sun Devils in it, recording seven kills on ten attempts with no errors.

It went deathly quiet in the second set when Jeremic went down awkwardly on her left ankle.

“We don’t know what is going to happen,” acting head coach Carlos Moreno said. “Hopefully she’ll be back and moving for Sunday but we don’t know. We are hoping for the best, but we really don’t know.”

The Cardinal were up big at that point and finished off the set without any trouble. Closing on a big block from junior middle blocker Tamme Alade and sophomore outside hitter Kathryn Plummer.

Plummer paced the Cardinal attack all throughout the second set with a whopping ten kills.

She would finish the match with 23 kills on 43 attempts and only five errors.

ASU responded to the rough second set by pushing hard coming out of the break, jumping out to an early lead 5-0 and not looking back.

Okaro once again recorded seven kills in a set, pushing her match total to 17 on a .500 hitting percentage.

The momentum would not last, however, as Stanford would steamroll through the final set. Without breaking a sweat the Cardinal hit .545 and only had one error in the set.

Okaro would finish the match with 19 kills on 40 swings. But worked mainly as the only source of the ASU offense.

Up next for ASU is another home match on Sunday against the California Golden Bears. First serve is at 11 a.m. MT.