TUCSON, Ariz. -- No. 21 Arizona was swept at home by 15th-ranked Washington on Friday evening (18-25, 23-25, 23-25), suffering its first three-set loss of the season.

"I'm disappointed in how we responded without Paige (Whipple) being here," said Rubio of his team, which was without outside hitter Paige Whipple, who is out this weekend with a concussion. "We never got into any kind of rhythm or flow, and part of that is because of how Washington played. Our team was not prepared to handle a new system of not having Paige in there. It's unfortunate that we were missing a key player. The fact that we were even close in set two and three is pretty amazing, but it was a poor effort on our part. We weren't prepared to play tonight against a good team."

Washington (12-3, 4-1 Pac-12) hit .333 for the match against Arizona (14-3, 3-2 Pac-12), which entered the match second in the Pac-12 with a .171 opponent hitting percentage. UA was outblocked in the match 9-1.

Kendra Dahlke had another monster match for UA in the loss. The Pac-12 leader in kills had 18 of them on Friday on .382 hitting. Candice Denny and Devyn Cross added six apiece as well.

"It was a rough game for us," said Dahlke. "I don't wanna say excuses that we were down a player, which we were. I thought we had the personnel on the floor to be able to put up a fight at least but I thought we didn't get enough stops. We are a really good blocking team and that didn't come through tonight. They served us a lot tougher than we served them and they were consistent than we were."

Arizona had no answer for the Washington offense in the first set as the Huskies outhit Arizona .385 to .095 and cruised to a 25-18 first-set victory despite seven kills from Dahlke.

In a much more closely contested second set, the Huskies narrowly defeated the Wildcats 25-23. The Huskies once again hit over .300 in the frame (.343) .

In the third, the Wildcats stormed back from down six (18-12) to pull within one four separate times, but never overcome the deficit as the Huskies won the set 25-23 and won the match, 3-0.

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The Cats will host 22nd-ranked Washington State on Sunday at noon in McKale.