By Nicholas Fortes          

Daily Titan Staff Writer

The Cal State Fullerton women’s volleyball team could not find a victory on senior night, as the Titans were swept 3-0 by Big West rival UC Irvine on Friday night at Titan Gym (23-25, 19-25, 22-25).

The Titans fought back the next night to sweep Cal State Northridge (26-24, 25-19, 25-18) in their second conference road win of the season.

“We know what UCI had,” said Assistant Coach Vinh Nguyen after the game. “We watched their film. We just couldn’t do it tonight.”

Reigning Big West player of the week, freshman middle blocker Kayla Neto had 13 kills and hit .312 in the loss to UCI and nine kills the next night to beat CSUN.

“They prepared for us,” Neto said. “They had two up on us on every hitter, so we had to make do with what we had and hit around them. It was just an off night, and they dug everything. They were just positioned really well.”

Senior middle blocker and team captain Alex Wolnisty finished her last home game with eight kills in 20 attempts with no errors, hitting .400.

Senior outside hitter Devon Bukoski finished with five kills and hit .286.

“Alex had a great night,” said Head Coach Carolyn Zimmerman. “She did everything she was capable of doing, and Bukoski hit .286. We couldn’t have asked her to do any more. She did great tonight.” 

UCI (21-6, 10-4) came out on fire to take a 9-3 lead. The Anteaters covered what seemed to be every inch of the court.

The Titans only earned one point on a side out with the other two resulting from UCI service errors.

The Titans (16-11, 7-7) called a timeout and UCI earned an ace on their very next serve, but the Titans won four points in a row, including an ace by sophomore setter Andrea Ragan.

The Titans eventually tied the game at 15-15 and took the lead 22-21 only to give the lead up and lose the first set 23-25.

The second set saw more of the same from the first as the Titans dropped the first seven points to the Anteaters, but after two UCI service errors and kills from Neto and sophomore outside hitter Torrie Brown, the Titans eventually tied the game up 11-11.

UCI pulled away toward the middle part of the set and easily won 25-19, in a set where the Titans never led and tied the score once.

“We’re going to have to watch a lot of film,” Neto said. “They’re going to show us all the things we could have done, like hit the low seems. There was so much there we couldn’t take advantage of tonight.”

The third set was the closest of the match, and the Titans took an early 3-1 lead, they’re biggest of the match to that point.

Fullerton continued to battle, digging potential kills from the UCI front line that continually bombarded the Titan defense with powerful kill attempts.

The Titans seemed in control of the fourth set until UCI went on a 6-0 run to take the lead 22-21 in the closing moments of the fourth.

UCI’s momentum could not be stalled as they took four of the last five points to come behind and stun the Titans with a 9-1 run to take the set 25-23 and win the game 3-0.

“(I’m) just extremely disappointed we didn’t compete,” Zimmerman said. “The girls can say what they want. When you let the opponent go on a 9-1 run, the story tells it all. We played careful, and we didn’t play to win.”

The Titans will face the Anteaters in their next match on Nov. 20 at UCI.