The Dons have a challenge in front of them this week as they hit the road for two WCC matches, first against Saint Mary's in Moraga, then against Pacific in Stockton.

The game against the cross-bay rival Gaels will begin at 7 p.m. on Thursday and features two teams looking to get back in the win column. Saint Mary's has been swept three matches in a row, but two of those matches were against San Diego and BYU who currently rank fifth and 16th in the nation respectively. The last time the Dons and Gaels met was on Sept. 27 in San Francisco when the Gaels (8-11, 3-5 WCC) swept the Dons. Tyna Adamcikova had a team-high 11 kills in that match and Camille Araujo and Nora Buvarp Lavik were both able to register two service aces each for USF which sits fourth in the WCC in aces on the season with 105.
 
USF (4-17, 0-8 WCC) faces Pacific for the first time this season on Saturday at 1 p.m. in Stockton. The Tigers (11-9, 5-3 WCC) are currently tied with LMU for third place in the WCC. In Pacific's last game they swept the Gaels and they will face Santa Clara before their tilt with the Dons. The last time the Tigers and Dons faced-off was a nearly a year ago, on October 24, 2015 in San Francisco when Pacific won in three tightly-contested sets (25-20, 25-22, 25-21).
 
One milestone to look for in the very near future is Kim Gutierrez's 1,000th career dig. The junior libero currently sits at 997 in her career and just last game moved into sole possession of eighth place on the Dons all-time leaderboard passing Carrie Dunlap. Gutierrez (averaging 3.12 digs/s) is on pace to finish this season with 1,087 career digs which would see her pass Caroline Skacel and Amanda Willnerd for sixth all-time.

Another set of big numbers to keep an eye on for the rest of the season are Adamcikova's attacking statistics. She currently sits at fifth in the WCC with 3.48 kills per set, which is also ranks her as the second leading freshman in the conference behind only BYU's McKenna Miller (4.17 kills/s). This leaves Adamcikova on pace for 372 kills in her first season which would be the second largest total from any USF player since 2011.

Both of this week's games and Gutierrez's milestone achievement will be streaming live on TheW.tv.