Arizona State volleyball run ends with 3-1 loss to No. 1 Stanford

The storybook season for the Arizona State volleyball team has come to an end.

The fifth-seeded Sun Devils lost to No. 1 and Pac-12 rival Stanford 3-1 (22-25, 25-22, 25-21, 25-21) late Friday night at Maples Pavilion. It marked just the school's third appearance in the Sweet 16 and first since 1995, but was the first time the school had won two NCAA Tournament matches.

The team ends the season 28-7, a year after going 13-19. It was the second-highest win total in school history but the highest single season winning percentage.

The Sun Devils were picked to finish 10th in the Pac-12 this season. When JJ Van Niel took over as coach a year ago, he had just nine players but he engineered quite the resurgence, a feat that earned him conference and region coach of the year honors.

It was a run Van Niel won't soon forget.

"The message that I want out to the world is I hope everyone gets a chance to coach long enough to experience a team that I just experienced," he said. "This is the most special group that I've ever had. I love them dearly and the thing I'm going to miss most about the season is getting to go in and working with them in the gym and in matches and just being around them. It's a really special group and I'm beyond proud of them. They represented us well, they represented Arizona well, the university well and themselves. I couldn't be more proud of them and of this group."

ASU had split with Stanford during the regular season and it was ASU that had last beaten the Cardinal 10 matches ago. ASU swept the Cardinal at Mullett Arena while Stanford had swept ASU earlier in its home. The Sun Devils were also the only conference foe to beat Stanford this season.

ASU came into momentum with 3-0 sweeps of Georgia and Brigham Young, those matches taking place in Provo, Utah last week.

ASU won the opening set, securing it on a kill by Geli Cyr but Stanford had 11 hitting errors in the game which helped ASU get out to the early lead. Stanford pulled its act together and took leads in the next three games, not looking back.

"Tonight we played one of the top-10 teams in the country and they (Stanford) were really good," Van Niel said. "They put a ton of pressure on us and I told everyone at the beginning if we can win the serve-and-pass battle, then we have a shot, and we did not tonight. They were just a little bit better on serving, and they were a little bit better at passing, and they deserved to beat us. They were the better team tonight. It was fun competing."

Senior Marta Levinska notched 17 kills, matching her total in each of the first two tournament matches. That total put her fourth for single-season kills in the program record book with 571. It was her 20th consecutive match with double-digit kills, tying her career-long record.

Cyr added 16 kills while setter Shannon Shields racked up 38 assists to go with four kills and two blocks. Claire Jeter had a team-high six blocks while libero Mary Shroll had a season-high 30 digs.

"Mary was unreal," Van Niel said of Shroll, a product of Corona Del Sol who came to ASU this season from Loyola Marymount. "I just kept looking up and she was at double-digit digs right away. She was flying all over, keeping us in rallies. It was really fun. It's probably her best defensive match by far. Even at the end she had a really nice serving run to try to get us close, so it was really cool to see her perform that way."

Stanford (29-3) advances to face defending national champion Texas (25-4), which outlasted Tennessee 3-2 (25-19, 20-25, 23-25, 26-24, 16-14) in match that took more than three hours to complete and preceded the ASU-Stanford showdown.

Other regional final matches pit Nebraska against Arkansas, Louisville against Pitt and Wisconsin against Pac-12 runner-up Oregon.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona State volleyball run ends with 3-1 loss to No. 1 Stanford