After seeing its unbeaten streak end last Friday, the No. 3 Stanford women’s volleyball team will be on the road this week, looking to keep its number of losses at one. The Cardinal fell in five games to No. 5 Washington at home last week, cutting short a 17-match winning streak which was the team’s best start since 1994.

“[Losing] can affect us in a lot of ways,” head coach John Dunning said. “In practice the last few days, we have been working very hard. We know that we didn’t play as well as we could have against Washington, so we want to raise our performance. We have been playing very well all season and made it look easy, but most seasons aren’t like that. We know that we will need to fight for what we want.”

The Cardinal will take that fight on the road to visit Arizona and Arizona State, the only Pac-10 teams Stanford has yet to face.

With five teams from the Pac-10 among the nation’s top nine, the Cardinal sits in a tie with the Huskies for the top spot in the nation’s most competitive conference, with identical 17-1, 6-1 records. The Wildcats and Sun Devils are off to less successful starts, struggling against their elite competitors to win five matches between them. Arizona is currently eighth in the Pac-10 standings, while ASU sits in sixth.

Despite their records, playing these teams on the road will be no easy feat.

“I think that both Arizona and Arizona State are much better than they were last year,” Dunning said. “Arizona is very successful at home — they are 6-2 at home. I think they are very dangerous on their own court. And they just lost two in a row. They did not play very well against Washington and then lost their rivalry match to ASU, so they are probably not very happy about that.

“Arizona State beat Oregon State at home and played a really amazing match with [No. 19] Oregon two weeks ago. They lost 30-32 to Oregon in the fourth, so they were very close to beating them. And they are 8-2 at home.”

The Sun Devils swept Washington State on the road and then won last week’s in-state rivalry match over the Wildcats, also in straight games. Arizona is on a two-match skid, with its most recent victory over winless Washington State.

The top offensive producer for the Sun Devils this season is freshman Sarah Reaves, who has 314 kills on the season and is hitting .261 overall. She is also tied for second on the team in digs behind senior libero Sydney Donahue.

Donahue leads the team with 6.3 digs per game and recorded a season-high 45 in a preseason match against Virgina. She is already the top digger in ASU history and set an NCAA record last season with 50 in a three-game match. Niece of Stanford associate head coach Denise Corlett, Donahue is currently among the top ten diggers in the nation.

Marina Mercer is the Sun Devils’ setter, with 12.47 assists per game, while newcomer Sara Todorovich is the squad’s top blocker.

“Sydney Donahue is the Pac-10 leader in digs and is having a great season,” Dunning said. “And they have two outside hitters who lit it up against Arizona. They have won three in a row and four out of five, and they are probably a better team than their record of 11-9 shows.”

Stanford swept ASU in both of their meetings last year. Current juniors Cynthia Barboza and Foluke Akinradewo led the Cardinal offense in both those matches, each tallying double-digit kills.

The Cardinal beat the Wildcats twice in 2006 as well, winning in three games at home and on the road. Barboza had 19 kills in the home sweep and Akinradewo hit .850 — 17 kills on 20 attempts with no errors — in Tucson.

This season, Arizona is led by Randy Goodenough with 266 kills and Jacy Norton has a team-high .336 hitting percentage. Paige Weber is averaging 12.39 assists per game while Dominique Lamb and Alanna Resch lead the squad in blocks and digs, respectively.

“Arizona is blocking a lot of balls,” Dunning said. “I think they will be a pretty significant presence at the net. Dominique Lamb is blocking as many balls as anybody in the Pac-10.”

Lamb is currently second in the conference in blocks with an average 1.59 per game.

Nearing the midpoint of the conference season, the Cardinal is tops in the Pac-10 in assists and kills per game and is barely behind Washington in team hitting percentage. Senior Bryn Kehoe — who broke Stanford’s 20-year-old career setting record in the loss to Washington — is the top setter in the conference with 14.19 per game, the nation’s second-best average. Akinradewo has the third-highest hitting percentage in the country and the best in the Pac-10 at .468 on the season.

This is the first of two back-to-back road trips for the Cardinal who will visit No. 4 USC and No. 7 UCLA next week. Stanford swept both of those teams at home earlier this year.