No. 20 BYU women's volleyball suffers its third consecutive loss to No. 13 ASU

On Halloween night, it wasn’t just skeletons, ghouls or Cosmo the Cougar in a banana costume celebrating the holiday in Provo.

The devils were out in Provo too: specifically, the Arizona State Sun Devils.

No. 20 BYU (13-7) was more competitive than in previous games against No.13 ASU (21-2) as the match went all the way to five sets (25-23, 17-25, 23-25, 25-14, 15-7.)

ASU’s Argentina Ung notch a season-high 56 assists before the Sun Devils came out with a 3-2 win.

In the previous two matchups, the Cougars got swept in straight sets with one of those games happening in last year's NCAA tournament. Ultimately though, BYU still came away with a 2-3 loss.

After a gritty comeback in the third set, the Cougars took a 2-1 lead and were in control amidst a tight game between the two teams.

“I liked our fight in the third set. … that showed a lot of character and grittiness from the team,” coach Heather Olmstead said. “We just weren’t quite clean enough to keep up with their serving and their passing was pretty good.”

However, from that point on, ASU started to look more like the team that had beaten BYU in the earlier matchup down in Tempe.

Coming into the fourth set, the Sun Devils head coach JJ Van Niel took a timeout after Claire Little cut the lead to 10-12. She notched one of her team-high 20 kills on that play with it going in between two Arizona State blockers and perfectly splitting two others players to land right before the end line.

Coming out of the timeout, ASU started off well getting one of Geli Cyr's 15 kills as it bounced off the outstretched hands of two BYU blockers into the open spot on the court.

In the next point, Cyr was also able to get an impressive one-handed punching dig that kept the point alive before ASU’s Roberta Rabelo to cap it off with a kill. Cyr tied teammate Mary Shroll, who is ranked No.15 in the country in digs per set, for a team-high 19 digs.

ASU took full control of the game as it proceeded to go on a 11-4 run and tie up BYU 2-2.

In the fifth set, the intensity was apparent as BYU and ASU fought early with the longest rally of the entire match happening at the 1-1 mark of the set. Arizona State ended up winning the point on a Claire Jeter kill.

But the Sun Devils took over again with a 6-0 run which had five kills, three of which came from Shania Cromartie, ASU's leader in kills this match. Along with 1 service ace, Arizona State took a commanding 14-5 lead before eventually winning 15-7.

BYU’s Kjersti Strong managed to get a kill to break the run and give the Cougars hope to go on a last-ditch comeback, but it ended up being too overwhelming of a deficit.

“I know that if I want to be a good teammate for them, that's what's expected of me,” Strong said. “Everytime I go up, I want to do the very best job I can and my teammates motivate me to do that.”

After compiling 16 attack errors and 9 service errors, Arizona State proceeded to only have six total attack errors and two service errors across the fourth and fifth set. Along with that, ASU was able to outscore BYU 26-13 with kills and get nine more digs in the last two sets.

Meanwhile for BYU, errors started to compile. Most notable was with its blocking as it went from zero blocking errors after the third set to six total when the game ended. To add to that, BYU had seven attacking errors and three service errors across the last two sets.

It wasn’t as if there wasn’t any good play from BYU though. In the third set, the team showed a lot of resilience after going down 7-2 early in the set before it chipped away at the score and got its first lead of the set at the 22-21 mark.

Following that, BYU’s Brielle Kemavor, recent winner of the Big 12 defensive player of the week, capped off the comeback with a kill that barely touched one of the fingers on ASU’s Savannah Kjolhede hand before hitting past the end line.

Despite having a blocking error on the previous play, Kemavor proved clutch in the set as she scored the last three points for BYU via kills.

Now with Arizona State winning the season series 2-0 against BYU, it will travel up north to Salt Lake City to face No. 22 Utah (17-4).

After that, it will travel back home to try and get the tiebreaker over No. 8 Kansas (19-1) in a heavily anticipated matchup between the top two teams in the Big 12.

For BYU, a rematch against unranked Arizona will happen Saturday. The last time these two teams faced off, the game went down to the wire before Arizona won 15-13 in the fifth set.

The match starts at 1 p.m. at Smith Fieldhouse. It will also be televised by ESPN+.