Gross Tabbed to All-WCC Preseason Squad
8/24/2017 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
MALIBU, Calif. — Sophomore Jasmine Gross, of the Pepperdine women's volleyball team, highlighted the preseason predictions after earning a spot on the West Coast Conference preseason squad, as announced by the conference office on Thursday afternoon.
Gross (Portland, Ore./Jesuit HS) was instrumental to the Waves in her premier freshman season. She was an All-WCC first team and All-Freshman Team honoree, as well as performing as a Pepperdine Scholar-Athlete and earning a spot on the WCC Commissioner's Honor Roll with bronze honors. She started in all 30 matches and played in 115 of the Waves 118 sets throughout the season. She averaged 1.34 blocks/set and 1.94 kills/set on a .293 hitting percentage. She tabbed her first-career double-double with career-high 15 blocks and 15 kills against Pacific and amassed double-figure kill matches on five occasions.
The 6-3 middle blocker ranks 1st in the Pepperdine women's volleyball record books for most blocks in a single season of the rally scoring era and 3rd all-time including the sideout scoring era with 154 total blocks in the season. Her 1.34 blocks/set ranks 5th all-time and 2nd in the rally scoring era at Pepperdine as well. She also broke the Waves' all-time blocking single-match record with 15 blocks against Pacific at home on October 29, a record that had stood at 14 (sideout scoring) since the 1991 and 1996 campaign when Lesli Asplund (‘91) and Carrie Romer (‘96) achieved the feat.
As a team, the Waves were voted to finish 6th in the conference this season. Voting for the preseason poll and preseason team is done by the WCC's 10 head coaches earlier in the summer.
BYU, ranked No. 10 in the national AVCA Preseason Coaches Poll, was slated to the top-spot with nine first place votes and 81 total points. No. 22 San Diego earned one first place vote and 72 total points to be predicted to finish 2nd in the conference. Portland, Pacific and Santa Clara round out the top-five with 58, 50 and 48 points respectively. Pepperdine garnered 47 point to fall in the No. 6 spot, while Saint Mary's, Loyola Marymount, Gonzaga and San Francisco close out the top-10.
Gross is the sole Wave to represent Pepperdine on the preseason squad. BYU and San Diego each marked two players on the team, while Pacific, Saint Mary's, Santa Clara, Portland and LMU each tabbed one player to the squad alongside the Waves.
Preseason All-WCC Team
- Kaity Edward, San Diego, Jr., MB
- Ashlyn Fleming, Pacific, So., MB
- Kristen Gengenbacher, San Diego, Sr., S
- Jasmine Gross, Pepperdine, So., MB
- Lindsey Knudsen, Saint Mary's, Jr., OH
- Mary Lake, BYU, So., L
- Kirsten Mead, Santa Clara, Sr., S
- McKenna Miller, BYU, So., OH
- Savannah Slattery, LMU, So., OH
- Hannah Troutman, Portland, Sr., OH
WCC Preseason Coaches Poll
- 1. #10 BYU
- 2. #22 San Diego
- 3. Portland
- 4. Pacific
- 5. Santa Clara
- 6. Pepperdine
- 7. Saint Mary's
- 8. Loyola Marymount
- 9. Gonzaga
- 10. San Francisco
Follow the Waves on Facebook and Twitter, @WavesVolleyball, and follow the team on Instagram, @peppvolley. Get all the most recent schedules, results and more on www.PepperdineWaves.com.
