California volleyball will compete in a pair of Big Spike matchups against rival No. 5 Stanford this week, traveling to The Farm to play the Cardinal (23-4, 14-2 ACC) at Maples Pavilion on Wednesday night before hosting them at Haas Pavilion on Sunday afternoon for Senior Day. Both matches will be streamed on ACCNX.
 
Last weekend, the Golden Bears (7-19, 4-12) fell in three to then-No. 10 SMU at home despite three Cal players recording eight kills (including an .889 outing from Mikayla Hayden) but performed much better two days later against then-No. 3 Pitt as they became the first unranked team to win a set against the Panthers since Oct. 17. Arissa Carbonara led Cal with 15 kills against Pitt, while Ashley Li and Peyton DeJardin each earned 10 kills apiece and Sophia Johnson recorded 14 digs for her 17th double-digit performance of the year.
 
At  No. 5 Stanford (23-4, 14-2 ACC): Wednesday, Nov. 19 – 7 p.m. PT (Stanford)
Live Stream: ACCNX
Live Stats: StatBroadcast
Last Meeting: Oct. 25, 2024 (at Stanford – Stanford won 3-0)
Last Cal Road Win vs. Stanford: Nov. 25, 2011 (3-1)
Bears vs. Cardinal All-Time Record: 13-87
Current Streak: Stanford won last nine
 
Vs.  No. 5 Stanford (23-4, 14-2 ACC): Sunday, Nov. 23 – 1 p.m. PT (Berkeley)
Live Stream: ACCNX
Live Stats: StatBroadcast
Tickets: CalBears.com
Last Home Meeting: Oct. 23, 2024 (Stanford won 3-0)
Last Cal Home Win vs. Stanford: Feb. 12, 2021 (3-2)
 
The 2025 Cardinal squad is young but very talented, with a 17-woman roster that includes 12 first- and second-year players but nevertheless leads the ACC standings. Stanford is coming off a pair of top-10 matches, upsetting then-No. 3 Pitt in five sets before losing in four to then-No. 10 SMU, and are 5-4 against national top-25 teams this season. Overall, Stanford has one of the best offenses in the country with a .299 hitting percentage on the year, also averaging an ACC-leading 13.30 assists per set and 14.11 kills per set.
 
Middle blocker Lizzy Andrew has been one of the most efficient offensive players in the nation, hitting .441 with 237 kills, and is also strong on the block at a clip of 1.19 per set; meanwhile, fellow middle Erika Sayer is likewise strong on the attack with a .394 hitting percentage and 216 kills. Stanford's top scorer Elia Rubin ranks fifth in the ACC with 0.38 service aces per set and leads her team with 3.31 kills per set (301 total), also ranking second on the Cardinal with 2.45 digs per set. A pair of rookies control the pace of both the offense and the defense, as setter Logan Parks ranks among the NCAA's top-50 setters with a 9.85 assists-per-set average and Spencer Etzler is averaging 3.85 digs per set. Both have reached even greater heights in conference play, with Parks putting up 10.76 assists per set and Etzler an ACC-high 4.12 digs per set.
 
 
THANK YOU, SENIORS
Cal volleyball will honor its five graduating seniors this Sunday after the match against No. 5 Stanford. Mikayla Hayden has consistently been one of the Bears' top blockers in all four years and has kicked things into another gear this season, recording a pair of kills-blocks double-doubles and posting the highest hitting percentage in a single match by any Bear this season (.889 with eight kills against No. 10 SMU). Peyton DeJardin has been one of the top scorers on the team in each of the past two seasons, surpassing 300 kills as a junior and posting her best kills-per-set average as a senior. Natalie Lau started her career as a serving specialist and was called into action as a junior to become Cal's starting setter for nearly the entire 2024 season, finishing the year as the ACC's No. 4 player in assists per set (9.61, also the most by any Bear since 2016). Sophie Scott was one of the Pac-12's top blockers as an underclassman and, despite missing over a year-and-a-half due to injury, is currently second on the team in career blocks while also acting as Cal's most efficient attacker in ACC play. Cherlin Antonio transferred to Cal in 2023 and was a key player in several matches for the Bears this year, including a 10-kill outing in the team's ACC Opener at Virginia Tech.
 
SALUTE TO SCOTT
Middle blocker Sophie Scott was selected as one of two October winners of the CalHOPE Courage Award, which was established in 2022 by CalHOPE in conjunction with the Associated Press (AP) and College Sports Communicators (CSC) to celebrate student-athletes at California colleges and universities who have overcome adversity and mental trauma that arises from personal hardships and injury. Scott, who joined the Bears in 2022, has undergone four knee surgeries in six years, including three in the last year-and-a-half, to repair serious injuries to both her ACLs, both menisci and her left MCL. As a result, she missed her entire high school senior year, as well as the first two months of her college sophomore year and her entire junior season, but has repeatedly worked her way back to aid the team however she can, be it from the sidelines or on the court. Scott has started seven matches for Cal this year, including the Bears' last five.
 
HAYDEN'S WORLD
Senior middle blocker Mikayla Hayden is posting her best season yet to cap off an impressive collegiate career. After surpassing 300 career blocks early in the season, Hayden became just the third Bear to post a pair of double-digit block performances within a seven-day span, recording 10 blocks each at Syracuse (Oct. 10) and against No. 14 Miami (Oct. 16). Those performances also marked her first two double-doubles since arriving at Cal, as she also totaled 17 kills (.452) against the Orange and 12 kills (.450) against the Hurricanes. Hayden was named the ACC Defensive Player of the Week on Oct. 20 after averaging 1.60 blocks per set against Miami and Florida State the previous weekend, followed by a national Rotation of the Week nod the next day. She is currently tied for 86th in the country with 113 blocks on the year, bringing her career total to 376 for eighth-most all-time at Cal.
 
BIG DIGS FOR JOHNSON
Cal libero Sophia Johnson was named the ACC Defensive Player of the Week on Sept. 29 for her outstanding play in the Bears' ACC-opening weekend at Virginia Tech and Virginia, averaging 5.29 digs per set to bring her string of double-digit digs performances to five and helping her team to its best conference start (2-0) since 2011. It was the first weekly recognition of Johnson's career as well as the first defensive award by any Bear since Kat Brown in 2012. Johnson posted another outstanding weekend on the road on Oct. 31 and Nov. 2, averaging 5.86 digs per set over two matches and collecting a career-high 26 digs at NC State – the most by any ACC player in a four-set match this season and the second most by an ACC player in a match of any length this year.
 
UPSET ALERT
On Oct. 16, the Bears shocked the volleyball world by pulling out a gritty five-set win over No. 14 Miami at Haas Pavilion, earning their first ranked win since the 2020-21 season against No. 15 Stanford and posting their first reverse sweep over a ranked opponent since 1988, when they defeated No. 11 Pacific.  As a team, Cal held the Hurricanes to just .163 hitting while two Bears - Mikayla Hayden (12 kills, 10 blocks) and Maria ?tirbu (45 assists, 10 digs) posted double-doubles. Other top contributors included Peyton DeJardin (19 kills, 5 blocks), Ashley Li (12 kills), Francesca Popescu (10 digs) and Dominique Phills (5 blocks).
 
FOREVER NO. 1
For the first time in program history, the Bears retired the jersey of one of their legends as 2010 American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) National Player of the Year Carli Lloyd had her No. 1 raised into the rafters before the Bears' ACC home opener against Louisville on Oct. 3. An outstanding setter, Lloyd finished her collegiate career (2007-10) with 5,697 assists – sixth-most in Pac-10 history – and 1,094 digs as well as three AVCA All-America honors, leading the Bears to four-straight NCAA Tournament appearances, two Final Fours (2007, 10) and an NCAA title match (2010). Also a dominant attacker, Lloyd holds the program record for the three highest hitting percentages in a four-set match, including a .750 (nine kills, zero errors) outing against Washington State on Nov. 6, 2009. She won a bronze medal with Team USA at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and won a veritable slew of national titles with club teams all over the world before co-founding League One Volleyball (LOVB) Pro and winning the league championship with LOVB Austin in its inaugural season (2025). Lloyd was inducted into the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame in 2023.
 
INTO THE HALL
Cal Athletics inducted former Golden Bear Hana Čutura into its Hall of Fame in October as the eighth Cal volleyball player to receive the honor. Čutura, who played in Berkeley from 2006-09, is the only Cal player to surpass 2,000 career kills (2,004) and posted 628 as a senior, second only to fellow Cal Hall of Famer Mia Jerkov on the program's single-season list. She was thrice named an AVCA All-American (2007-09) and helped lead the Bears to four-straight NCAA Tournaments, including the team's first Final Four appearance in 2007 (a year in which she was also named the NCAA Tournament Gainsville Regional MVP). Čutura was named the Pac-10 Player of the Year in 2009, becoming just the second Bear in history (Sylvie Monnet, 1983) to receive a conference player of the year award.
 
SISTER, SISTER
Senior setter Natalie Lau, who began the 2024 season on the bench but stepped into that year's starting role after five games due to her teammate's season-ending injury, is joined by her sister Elise Lau (a freshman defensive specialist) on the court as one of just three pairs of sisters on the same Power 4 team this season. The Brisbane natives, who played high school ball for St. Ignatius and club ball for Vision, grew up as Cal fans, attending as many volleyball, football and basketball games as they could and dreaming of one day representing the Blue & Gold. According to head coach Jen Malcom, the Laus are "two of the most competitive players on our team." This is the first year that they have played on any team together, having grown up too far apart in age to be part of the same high school or club squads.
 
NEW BEARS ON THE BLOCK
Cal brings seven new players to its roster this season in the form of five freshmen and two transfers, making up nearly half of the Bears' squad.  The first-year players are composed of defensive specialists Francesca Popescu (Johns Creek, Georgia) and Elise Lau (Brisbane), outside hitter Arissa Carbonara (Cuero, Texas), opposite Annemarie O'Gara (Phoenix) and setter Maria ?tirbu (Bucharest, Romania). Between them, they bring national team experience (?tirbu), two All-America honors (Popescu), a national title (O'Gara), three All-State honors (Carbonara, Popescu) and a tournament title (Lau). The transfers, sophomore outside hitter Dominique Phills (Iowa) and junior middle blocker Ashleigh Woodruff (Stony Brook), each bring valuable experience to the young roster, bolstering positions that will have at least one player graduating at the end of this season. As of Nov. 17, Popescu has played in every set of the Bears' season and leads the team in service aces, while ?tirbu took over in mid-September as Cal's full-time starting setter and Phills has started in 21 of Cal's matches this season.
 
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