Cal State San Marcos swept San Francisco State 25-18, 25-18, 26-24 Saturday at The Sports Center for its first CCAA victory of the season. The Cougars created the separation late, closing the first set with six straight points and the third with three.
Addison Kranz led CSUSM with 14 kills. Ebony Lewis added 12 kills, 13 digs and three blocks for her second consecutive double-double, while McKenna Kehoe collected a match-high 17 digs and two aces. The Cougars hit .192, held the Gators to .118 and committed seven fewer attack errors.
The opening set changed at 19-18. San Francisco State had erased an early deficit and stayed within one, but Kehoe took the service line and CSUSM scored the final six points. The run turned a live set into a 25-18 finish before the Gators could rotate out of trouble.
CSUSM controlled the middle of the second. After trailing 2-0, the Cougars scored five in a row, stretched the lead to 11-6 and used a later 5-1 run to make it 19-12. They hit .333 in the frame. Lewis ended it with a kill, producing the same seven-point margin without the late suspense.
The sweep nearly came apart in the third. Annika Blas-Cedeno served a seven-point CSUSM run for a 14-7 lead, and the margin later reached 20-13. San Francisco State answered all of it and earned set point at 24-23. Kranz tied the score with a kill. A Gators attack error moved CSUSM ahead, and Shelby Jackson served the match-ending ace.
That final exchange captured the difference. San Francisco State produced 35 kills to CSUSM's 36, and the teams were separated by one ace and one block. The Cougars won the error column 12-19 and the dig column 67-58. They did not dominate every phase; they made fewer empty swings and defended enough balls to extend decisive rotations.
The match also tested how CSUSM handled changing score states. Its first two sets were won by extending leads. The third required recovering after a seven-point cushion vanished. Kranz's tying kill stopped a set that had become reactive, and Jackson's ace ended it before San Francisco State could earn another attack at 25-all.
Blair Keith recorded 20 assists and six digs. Blas-Cedeno added seven assists and 10 digs, and Jackson also finished with 10 digs. The distribution left three attackers with at least six kills. Kranz reached double figures for the sixth time this season, while Lewis provided scoring and back-row coverage in the same rotation.
Five CSUSM players contributed to the team's five blocks, with Lewis involved in three and Jules Tindall in two. The Cougars also received six kills from Blayne Seligmiller. That work in the middle limited San Francisco State's ability to solve the match by leaning on one matchup, particularly once longer rallies pushed both teams away from perfect first contacts.
CSUSM improved to 4-5 overall and 1-1 in conference play. The sweep snapped a seven-match losing streak against San Francisco State and was the Cougars' first win in the series since September 2021. They begin a two-match road trip Friday at UC Merced. The route forward is visible in the endings: serving created separation, but the points held because CSUSM paired pressure with lower-error attacking.