FULLERTON, Calif. - Cal State Fullerton led only once on Saturday night as it remained winless on the season with a 3-0 (25-13, 25-18, 25-17) Big West Conference defeat at the hands of UC Riverside at Titan Gym.
The Titans (0-23, 0-11) held the lead early in the first set but the Highlanders (9-16, 4-8) overtook Fullerton with a scoring run and never trailed again in the match. Fullerton posted a meager .081 attacking percentage (25-17-99) and had just two players record more than six kills.
Megann Delgado led the offense with 10 kills and Summer Kerins added six in the loss. Mackenzie Olsen dished out 24 assists and Paige Reed led the defense with 13 of the team's 38 digs on the night.
Helena Peric led the Highlanders with 15 kills on the night with a .379 attacking percentage. Fabiana Rosas posted 11 kills and Alex Gresham added nine to go along with four digs and four blocks. Chelsea Doyle narrowly missed a double-double as she had 37 assists and nine digs, setting the Highlanders to a .303 (48-15-109) attacking percentage.
The Titans dropped the first set after giving up a 7-0 run to break a 6-6 tie. The Highlanders would outscore the Titans 19-7 to close out the set, getting five kills in the set from Gresham. The Titans had seven kills but also committed seven errors in the set.
In the second. The Highlanders led wire-to-wire with the Titans tying the score on two occasions. After trading the first two points of the frame, the Titans fell behind by two but got a kill from Delgado followed by an ace to tie the score 4-4. From there, the Highlanders ran off five of the next six to take a 9-5 advantage and never looked back.
The Highlanders jumped out to a 17-6 lead to open the third set. The Titans fought back, scoring eight of the next 10 points to close the gap to five but it was too late as the Highlanders completed the sweep.
Notes: Kyra Hill posted 12 digs on Saturday night, setting a new career high. She also failed to record double digits in kills for the first time since Oct. 16 at Cal Poly, snapping a five-match streak… Delgado posted double-digit kills for the fourth time this season… The Titans 23 straight losses to start the season are two shy of the team's second worst start in program history (1992, 25 straight) and three shy of the worst start in Titans history (1994, 26 straight)… UC Riverside swept the season series between the teams for the first time ever and has now won consecutive matches over Fullerton for the first time since Nov. 17, 2001-Sept. 21, 2002 when the Highlanders won the last meeting of the 2001 season and the first of the 2002 campaign.
