Suli Davis Drops 26 as No. 5 SMU Flips Cal After a Blistering First Set

DALLAS — California walked into Moody Coliseum swinging like a team that had not read the rankings. For one set, the Golden Bears made No. 5 SMU look ordinary. Then the Mustangs remembered who owns this building, and the afternoon flipped from surprise to statement.

SMU recovered from a 25-19 opening-set loss and beat California 3-1 on Sept. 27, taking the last three frames 25-16, 25-20 and 25-15 in front of 2,127 fans at Moody Coliseum. The Mustangs improved to 10-2 and 2-0 in ACC play. Cal fell to 10-3 and 0-2 in the league, still searching for its first conference win on a Sunday that started loud and ended familiar.

Outside hitter Suli Davis finished with a season-high 26 kills on .308 hitting and 27.5 points. Setter Hannah Beauford dealt 43 assists. Libero Victoria Harris stacked 12 digs and two aces. And the middle blockers — Natalia Newsome and Favor Anyanwu — combined for 18 kills on a ridiculous .630 clip with one error in 27 swings. That is how a ranked home team turns a rocky start into a four-set win without needing a miracle.

The Opening Punch Belonged to Cal

California hit .538 in the first set. Sixteen kills. Two errors. Twenty-six attempts. That is not a visiting team feeling out the gym. That is a visiting team dictating terms, and for 25 points it worked.

Abby Zimmerman led the Bears with 11 kills for the match. Sawyer Thomsen added nine kills without an attack error on the afternoon, and Cari Bohm chipped in seven. Setter Anna Flores finished with 36 assists. For a stretch in set one, every Cal swing seemed to find floor or a soft hand, and SMU's usual Moody edge looked temporarily borrowed.

Davis still dropped 10 kills in that first frame — the most by any Mustang in a single set during the current coaching era, per SMU Athletics — but it was not enough to save the set. Cal took it 25-19, and the building that had watched SMU stack home wins suddenly had a problem to solve. Ranked teams get tested in September. The question is whether they answer before the match slips.

The Mustangs Solve Problems Quickly

Set two was the correction. SMU hit .409, held Cal to .214, and won 25-16. The middles started punishing the seams. Newsome finished the match with nine kills on .615 hitting. Anyanwu matched her with nine kills on .643 and led the Mustangs with four blocks. When those two are efficient, SMU's offense stops looking like a one-wing attack and starts looking like a full-court problem that defenses cannot key on a single pin.

Beauford's distribution mattered as much as the swings. Forty-three assists in a four-set match means the ball kept finding the right option even after Cal's early surge. Harris, who has reached double-digit digs in 11 of 12 matches this season, cleaned up the backcourt and added pressure from the service line with two of SMU's six aces. Gabi Placide and Christa Wilburn each added an ace as well, stretching Cal's serve receive when the Bears needed a sideout most.

The Mustangs left set two with the score knotted at one set apiece and the momentum that Moody Coliseum has come to expect. California's .538 opening clip was already a memory. Over the final three sets, SMU held the Bears to a combined .132 hitting percentage, including sub-.100 marks in sets three (.074) and four (.087). That is not a gradual fade. That is a door closing.

The Turning Point Was Not One Swing — It Was a Clamp

There was no single highlight that flipped the match. There was a clamp. After Cal's explosive start, SMU won the statistical war that decides ACC volleyball: kills (56-41), assists (52-41), digs (35-27) and aces (6-2). Cal still edged the Mustangs in blocks, 9-7, which is a reminder that the Bears never stopped competing at the net. They just stopped converting on the attack once SMU's dig-and-transition machine settled in.

Set three went 25-20 to SMU. Set four went 25-15. By the end, California looked like a team that had emptied the magazine in the first 25 points and spent the rest of the afternoon searching for reloads. Zimmerman's 11 kills led Cal, but the supporting production thinned as SMU's block and dig package took over. Sophia Johnson paced the Bears with 10 digs. It was not enough to survive three straight sets of Mustang pressure in a building that rewards the side that adjusts first.

Davis's afternoon deserves its own paragraph. Twenty-six kills is tied for the second most by a Mustang in a four-set match in the 25-point rally scoring era, according to SMU Athletics. She has now cleared 20 kills four times this season and has logged 15 or more in all but one match. When your primary outside is that consistent, you can survive a cold opening set without panic. Moody did not panic. Moody waited — and then Davis kept swinging.

What the Numbers Say Out Loud

SMU hit .358 as a team. California hit .231. The Mustangs have now hit .300 or better in every home match this season, and they are 52-0 under Erger when they clear that .300 threshold, per SMU Athletics. Those are not decorative program notes. They explain why a 15-match home winning streak — the longest in SMU program history and tied for the third-longest active streak in the country — keeps growing one four-set afternoon at a time.

Add the ACC context and the afternoon gets louder. This was SMU's 11th straight conference win, the longest active streak in the league. Since joining the ACC in 2024, the Mustangs are 35-7 in conference play. Against California specifically, SMU improved to 3-1 all-time and has now taken the last three meetings. The rankings and the resume are starting to rhyme, and opponents keep learning the same lesson in Dallas.

Cal arrived at 10-3 with plenty of nonconference credibility. Leaving Dallas 0-2 in ACC play is a different conversation. The Bears showed they can punch a top-five team in the mouth for a set. Closing that punch over four sets on the road against a Moody crowd is the next step, and Sunday was not that step.

Stakes Heading Into October

For SMU, the win closed the opening weekend of ACC play at 2-0 and kept the home fortress intact. The Mustangs head on the road for their first ACC road match against Syracuse on Friday, Oct. 2, at 5 p.m. CT, streamed on ACCNX. Road tests are where conference favorites get honest. A team that can drop the first set at home and still hit .358 for the match is built for those tests — if the middles stay this efficient and Davis keeps hunting 20-kill nights away from the Moody echo.

For California, the film will show a first set worth keeping and three sets that slipped away when SMU's serving, digging and middle attack took over. Zimmerman, Thomsen and Bohm gave the Bears a front-row foundation. Flores ran the offense with 36 assists. The gap was in finishing once SMU adjusted. In a league this deep, one hot set does not buy you a road split against a top-five home team.

The Close

Moody Coliseum has a habit now. Visitors bring energy. The Mustangs bring answers. California brought a .538 first set and left with a 3-1 loss, a season-high from Davis ringing in its ears, and another data point that SMU's home streak is not a vibe — it is a system. Fifteen in a row. Eleven straight in the ACC. And a top-five team that knows how to lose a set without losing the plot.