Aztec Volleyball Team Plans to Give Stanford the Full Serve

The way Rudy Suwara sees things, every team still alive in the NCAA women’s volleyball playoffs is 1-0.

That’s one of the reasons Suwara believes his San Diego State team can upset Stanford at 8:30 tonight in a West Region semifinal at UCLA’s John Wooden Center. SDSU (24-11) is the sixth-seeded team in the region. Stanford (26-3) is seeded second. Top-seeded UCLA (32-1) plays No. 4 New Mexico (22-6) in the other semifinal at 6:30 p.m. The winners play Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

“Stanford’s real good, but in this tournament, they’re 1-0 just like us,” Suwara said.

SDSU became 1-0 by upsetting third-seeded Brigham Young, 3-1, last Friday at BYU in the first round. Stanford, whose only losses this year were to UCLA (twice) and Pacific, advanced easily over No. 7 Wyoming, 3-0. SDSU has not played the Cardinal this season but leads the series 10-6.

“One thing in our favor is we’ve got one of the best-serving teams in the nation,” Suwara said. “We have Gracie Schutt, who some people think is the hardest server that’s ever been in women’s volleyball on the college level. We’ve got Sandy Thompson, who also hits a hard spinning serve. We’ve got Angela Martin and Kim Lester, who hit really tough flip serves.

“We think our serving, hopefully, will rattle Stanford and throw their passing off. If we can throw their passing off, we can play with anybody. That was our game plan against BYU, and that’s our game plan against Stanford.”