BERKELEY – California volleyball returns to Haas Pavilion this weekend for its penultimate two-game homestand of the season, welcoming Washington on Friday at 7 p.m. PT and No. 9 Washington State on Sunday at noon.
 
The Golden Bears (15-8, 4-8 Pac-12) are 29-48 all-time against the Huskies (13-10, 4-8), who won in four sets in the first matchup between the two teams earlier this year. Cal's last win over Washington was over a decade ago on Nov. 12, 2011, but the Bears will look to take advantage of a Huskies squad that has lost its past four matches. As a team, UW ranks 24th in the nation with 1.85 service aces per set and 33rd with 165 total aces; in Cal's last trip to Seattle, the Dawgs were as good as advertised on that front with nine on the match. UW's top attacker that day was junior Madi Endsley, who posted 18 kills on .400 hitting.
 
Cal holds the series advantage over the Cougars (18-5, 8-4) at 46-33, but suffered a 3-0 defeat in their first meeting this season. The Bears have not had a win over a top-10 team since 2012 – Washington State has enjoyed a program-record seven straight weeks in that echelon this season. The Cougs have lost their past two matches but still rank 14th in the nation with a team .284 hitting percentage and 26th with 2.57 blocks per set. Senior Magda Jehlárová has been unstoppable for WSU, boasting a .427 hitting percentage (eighth best in Division I), 113 total blocks (16th) and 1.40 blocks per set (17) on the year. She earned 10 kills (.500), seven digs and four service aces against Cal last month in Pullman.

LI LEADS
Freshman outside hitter Xuemeng (Maggie) Li has already cemented her name in the Cal record books as she is the first player in program history to win Pac-12 honors in consecutive weeks, as well as the Bears' first five-time Pac-12 Freshman of the Week. She earned Cal's first Pac-12 weekly honor since 2019 – and its first rookie honor since 2018 – after the Bears' first three matches of the season. Li totaled 34 kills and 27 digs with a .313 hitting percentage at the Army Invitational, earning her way onto the all-tournament team. The next week, Li added two stellar matches to her season with a 20-kill, nine-dig performance against Portland State and a 13-kill outing on .579 hitting against Southern Utah, earning her second Pac-12 Freshman of the Week honor – the first Golden Bear to earn the award twice since Christina Higgins in 2011. Li followed that up by posting 61 kills and 50 digs over the next four games, including three straight double-doubles with a 24-kill performance against Texas State, to earn her third consecutive nod and become the first freshman in conference history to start off the season with three straight weekly awards. For award win number four, she totaled 21 kills and 13 digs on .340 hitting in the win over Arizona to help Cal break a 57-match Pac-12 losing streak, then posted another 19 kills against No. 25 Arizona State. Her efforts at No. 21 Arizona State and Arizona a month later – leading the team in kills in both matches – earned her a fifth conference nod to tie for third most in the history of the award. Currently, she ranks second among all Division I freshmen with 337 total kills (36th all D-I/3rd Pac-12), 4.01 kills per set (34th D-I/4th Pac-12) and 377.5 points (49th D-I/4th Pac-12), also leading the team with eight double-doubles on the year while having the second most digs on the roster (207).
 
DESA DOMINATES
Senior libero Tara DeSa currently leads the Pac-12 with 4.48 digs per set (0.34 ahead of second place) and 376 digs (59 ahead of second place) to anchor a Cal defense that is third best in the Pac-12 with a .179 opponent hitting percentage. She recorded her first career double-double (10 assists, 16 digs) in September against Montana State and has two all-tournament nods (including an Army Invitational MVP) to her name this season. DeSa had her best full year at libero in her third season with the Bears, ranking third in the Pac-12 with 448 total digs and fourth in the conference with 4.00 digs per set. A three-time all-tournament team member, she became just the 11th Golden Bear ever to record 30 or more digs in a single match with a 32-dig effort against Arizona (Nov. 17) – just one shy of the program record. DeSa also posted 118 assists, third most on the team. Entering week 11 of the 2023 season, she is eighth in program history with 1,224 career digs and needs just 14 more to rise to No. 7.
 
MAEDER'S MARK
Junior setter Annalea Maeder crossed the 2,000 career assists mark against Utah (Sept. 24), entering this weekend with 2,314 to her name to rank eighth most at Cal all time. Having totaled 777 assists so far on the year, she is on pace to smash her 2022 season total of 846. Maeder is currently second on the team with seven double-doubles this season and has posted 30 or more assists in 13 of Cal's 23 matches so far. On Sept. 8, she set a new career high of 53 assists against Southeastern Louisiana then posted 54 later that day against Texas State. As of week 11, Maeder leads the team in both assists and service aces (32), is third in digs (197) and is fourth in total blocks (33). She needs only four more aces for 101 on her career, which would put her in a tie for 10th most in program history.
 
NEW COACH ON THE BLOCK
Twenty-seven-year-old Crissy Jones Schoonderwoerd stepped into the interim head coach role for the Golden Bears and powered them to an 11-0 start – undefeated in nonconference play – and also led Cal to its first win over USC since 2014 after being hired as an assistant in February 2023. She previously acted as assistant coach for Cal Poly beach volleyball in 2020 while finding success on the AVP and FIVB circuits as a player. In her collegiate career at Washington and later at Cal Poly, she became just the second player in NCAA history to earn All-American honors for both indoor and beach volleyball. Jones Schoonderwoerd is joined on the staff by two first-year assistant coaches in Cal alumna Savannah Rennie and AVP pro Billy Allen.
 
WELCOME TO BEAR TERRITORY
Five newcomers joined the Bears in 2023. Setter Paige Morningstar (Pittsburgh), a redshirt sophomore who spent her first two years with Louisville, came to Berkeley with NCAA tournament experience under her belt and an impressive high school résumé that includes multiple National High School Female Athlete of the Year honors and four state championships. Outside hitter Xuemeng (Maggie) Li (Beijing) has experience as a member of the Chinese Women's National U20 and II Teams, while Ashley Li (Diamond Bar) was selected to the Division 2 All-CIF Southern Section Team. Sawyer Thomsen (Lawrence, Kansas) and Sophia Johnson (Wayzata, Minnesota) round out the group as highly ranked players in their respective states (Thomsen as the No. 1 middle blocker in Kansas and Johnson as Minnesota's No. 2 libero).
 
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