ASU's sand volleyball season is rapidly coming to an end as the team heads to Santa Monica for the Pac-12 Championship Tournament hosted by USC.
Only five Pac-12 teams are participating: USC (21-0), UCLA (8-2), Arizona (13-1), ASU (4-8) and California (7-12).
The weekend will start with the team Invitational. This part of the weekend will consist of the five pairs from each team playing each other. For example, the No. 1s from ASU will play the No. 1s from Cal and so on and so forth.
Saturday will start off with ASU against Cal, Arizona against UCLA and a bye for USC. There will be a winning and losing bracket with the championship game being between the winner of each.
On Sunday, there will be two different tournaments: the silver championship and the gold.
The silver will consist of all the No. 4 and No. 5 pairs from each team, with USC again starting with a bye. The ASU pairings have not been confirmed at this time but the No. 4s will start off against UCLA and the No. 5s against California.
Frances Giedraitis and Andi Lowrance have played the No. 5 seed the majority of the season, so it wouldn't come as a surprise if they were ASU's No. 5s this weekend. It is also likely that freshman Halle Harker and junior Whitney Follette will be the No. 4 pair in Santa Monica.
Following those games will be the Gold Championship, consisting of the top three pairs from each team.
ASU's No. 1 pair, which will most likely be juniors Bianca Arellano and Macey Gardner, will play USC's No. 3 pair. The Sun Devils' No. 2 pair, which has been graduate student Bethany Jorgensen and senior Jordy Checkal recently, will play Arizona's No. 2 pair. Lastly, ASU's No. 3s, recently sophomore Kizzy Willey and freshman Sydney Palmer, will battle it out against UCLA's No. 1s.
This is expected to be a challenging weekend for the Sun Devils, going in as the fourth seed, but the team will get the experience that head coach Jason Watson has been looking for all season. ASU will have a chance to increase its time on the sand against teams they will meet again at the first-ever NCAA sand volleyball tournament in May 2016.
The games will be played at the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica and will start at 9 a.m. both days.
Reach the reporter at kewens@asu.edu or follow @katlynewens on Twitter.
Like State Press Sports on Facebook or follow @statepresssport on Twitter.
