UT a runner-up again in loss to Stanford
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Inky Ajanaku had 18 kills, Kathryn Plummer added 16 and Stanford beat Texas 25-21, 25-19, 18-25, 25-21 on Saturday night in the NCAA women’s volleyball final.
The Cardinal (27-7) won 16 of their last 17 matches to complete an unlikely championship run with four freshman starters.
After losing the third set, Stanford jumped out to a 6-0 lead and continued to dominate the net. Plummer received a bump set from Kelsey Humphries and registered the winning kill off of the Texas block to secure the program’s seventh national title and first since 2004.
The loss marks a second consecutive NCAA runner-up finish for Texas, which ended the year 27-5, after losing in three sets to Nebraska last year. Micaya White had 17 kills, and Ebony Nwanebu 16. In other college news: • The Atlantic Coast Conference fined Louisville and Virginia Tech $25,000 each after reviewing the findings of a Wake Forest investigation that concluded a former Demon Deacons assistant coach-turned-broadcaster leaked game plans to opponents.
Commissioner John Swofford said in a statement Saturday that he is “deeply disturbed something like this would occur.”
The league said its review and follow-up dis- cussions with the schools indicated that game plan information for four of Wake Forest’s games was provided to three schools over a three-year period from 2014-16 — Virginia Tech in 2014, Louisville in 2016 and Army in both 2014 and ‘16.
The announcement came four days after former Wake Forest assistant and radio analyst Tommy Elrod was fired after the school determined he shared or attempted to share inside information.
• The men’s soccer team at Washington University in St. Louis was indefinitely suspended for what the university calls sexually explicit comments and other inappropriate behavior toward the women’s soccer team. Members of the women’s team alerted administrators to the comments Wednesday. The university said in a statement that comments made toward members of the women’s team in an online document from 2015 were “degrading and sexually explicit.”