TALLAHASSEE, FLA. – California volleyball played its fifth-straight match against a national top-25 opponent Friday afternoon, taking on No. 23 Florida State to start off its penultimate road weekend of the 2024 season. Despite holding a lead for much of the first set and hitting over .400 in the third, the Golden Bears (10-13, 2-9 ACC) ultimately lost in straight sets, 25-23, 25-19, 25-18, to the Seminoles (16-5, 8-3).
 
As a team, Cal hit .236 - its best percentage in the past seven matches – but could not stand up to Florida State's .406. Sophomore Xuemeng (Maggie) Li (.308) tied with Seminoles sophomore Kyleene Filimaua with 14 kills on the day, while junior Peyton DeJardin was second on the team with eight on .389 hitting; junior Mikayla Hayden, who returned to the lineup after a month on the sideline, contributed six kills of her own and led the Bears with four blocks.
 
Florida State scored the first three points of the match, but Cal responded shortly afterward with a four-point run to take a 5-4 lead. The two teams battled furiously back and forth from there, with neither team able to take more than a two-point lead until the very end of the set, when the Seminoles recorded a four-point run of their own to come back from a 23-21 deficit. They continued that momentum into the second, posting two early 5-0 sequences to put the Bears in a 12-3 hole; Cal was unable to come within more than five despite an increased scoring pace and two-straight blocks from Hayden mid-set.
 
Both offenses kicked into full gear in Set Three, with Cal hitting .450 to Florida State's .577 – however, a 5-0 start for the Seminoles proved too much for the Bears to overcome, despite Cal shrinking the gap to two early on, as the host team posted another pair of three-point runs and a five-point run to stretch its lead to eight points (20-12). The Bears could only post consecutive points one more time (a Hayden kill and a DeJardin ace to make the score 22-16, Florida State) before the Seminoles closed out the match.
 
UP NEXT
The Bears will head to Coral Gables, Florida, to play Miami (15-7, 6-5) Sunday morning at 10 a.m. PT.

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