Oregon State begins stretch drive tonight against Oregon in volleyball Civil War

By Brooks Hatch
Gazette-Times reporter

The Oregon State volleyball team’s magic number is three.

Nothing is guaranteed, of course, but OSU coach Terry Liskevych is virtually certain the Beavers will advance to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2001 if they win three of their remaining seven Pacific-10 Conference matches.

“We know what we have to do,” he said before Thursday’s practice. “I think we qualify with two more wins, but we’re over the hump with winning three.”

That would leave OSU (14-10, 3-8) with a 17-14 overall record and several victories over ranked opponents.

Their quest — which took a heartbreaking detour with a 16-14 fifth-set loss at No. 12 USC last Saturday in their most recent match — resumes tonight when the Beavers host No. 8 Oregon (19-5, 7-4) in round two of the Civil War. Match time is 7 p.m. at Gill Coliseum and all Generation Beavs members will be admitted free of charge.

It’s the opener of a three-match homestand that also includes next weekend’s set with the Washington schools. Five of OSU’s final seven regular season matches are at Gill Coliseum and the road matches are against the unranked Arizona schools, so the stage is set for a strong stretch drive.

“The key is doing a good job against the Ducks, Washington State and the Arizona weekend,” Liskevych said. “Those are winnable matches. You want to beat one of these really top teams, whether it’s Oregon or Washington.

“I don’t want to go into the last week saying we’ve got to win a road match against (No. 2) Stanford or (No. 6) Cal. Not that we can’t, but you don’t want to be in that position. They’re both really good.

“We control our destiny, and it starts with the Civil War.”

At one time the Beavers could pretty much assume a Civil War match would end in victory. They were 19-7 against the Ducks from 1993 through 2005, with sweeps in 1994, 1995, 1997, 2001, 2003, 2004 and 2005.

However, the rivalry has turned of late and the Ducks currently enjoy a five-match winning streak in the series. They prevailed 3-0 in Eugene on Oct. 12; set scores were 25-20, 25-23 and 25-14.

“We led in the first and second set and we really had every opportunity to win the second set,” Liskevych said. “That was the match,” because OSU simply wasn’t good enough to rally from a 2-0 deficit on the road.

Oregon coach Jim Moore has completely rebuilt a program that was a perennial last-place finisher in the Pac-10 before his arrival. Middle blocker Neticia Enesi is the current Pac-10 Player of the Week, outside hitters Gorana Maricic is third in the Pac-10 in kills, outside hitter Sonja Newcombe was all-Pac-10 in 2007 and libero Katie Swoboda is the Pac-10’s top digger.

Maricic had 20 kills, Newcombe 10, Heather Meyers nine and Eresi seven in the Oct. 12 match.

“They’re very good, with four players who attack very well,” Liskevych said. “They convert plays into points and minimize their errors. We’re still error-prone, and that has to get better. We need to dig the ball.

“The emotion of the Civil War is important. They’ve been very good the last two or three years and that has really sparked even more of a tough row to hoe. We need to get off to a good start, contest every point hard, be scrappy and make sure we keep the ball in play.”

Freshman defensive specialist/libero Betsy Devich said the Beavers can’t have mental lapses and let Oregon run off four or five consecutive points, as it did in routing the Beavers in the third set of the match at McArthur Court.

“It all comes down to mental focus because we have the skills and we know how to do the physical things,” she said. “We can’t make mental errors because those accumulate into five or six points and that makes the difference in every games.”

OSU is 6-4 overall and 2-2 in Pac-10 matches at Gill Coliseum.

“Where you play shouldn’t make a difference but it’s definitely going to be good for us to have everyone there and supporting us,” Devich said. “That will be really cool.”