MALIBU “”mdash; There were strange things afoot in Firestone
Fieldhouse on Thursday.
Led by National Player of the Year candidate Brittany Hochevar,
the Beach brought a raucous crowd to Pepperdine in support of their
team, essentially turning the match into another 49er home game. As
if that weren’t enough already, the Bruins hadn’t won a
game against a ranked opponent in over two months.
All the Bruins did, however, was win in dominating fashion,
sweeping the 49ers in three games.
It seemed like something straight out of the Twilight Zone, as
the Bruins outplayed what was supposed to be a superior Long Beach
team. After the match, 49er head coach Brian Gimmarillo could only
shake his head in disbelief.
“We haven’t been out-dug in two years, and they
out-dug us tonight," he said. "They had eight ace serves, and we
didn’t have anybody have eight aces against us for the whole
year.”
Indeed, if there was one area in which the Bruins shocked
everyone, it was in their serving. Sophomore Heather Cullen and
senior Lauren Fendrick each had three aces and no service errors.
Sophomore Brynn Murphy and freshman Haley Jorgensborg threw in the
other two for good measure.
“It felt really fluid tonight,” Cullen said.
“It felt good to serve here.”
The abundance of aces surprised even UCLA head coach Andy
Banachowski, who casually joked about his team’s serving
prowess after the match.
“We get eight in practice sometimes,” he said.
Cullen, for her part, broke out a jump serve that had been lying
dormant for the better part of an entire season. Fendrick’s
deep serves just caught the back line twice. Jorgensborg’s
serve was deflected by the net, but somehow fell untouched for
another ace. All in all, things that hadn’t happened all
season suddenly started happening in the Bruins’ favor.
“People that had put their jumper on the shelf brought
them back out tonight,” Banachowski said.”
The serving epitomized the match itself, as a gutty effort by
the Bruins shocked the confident 49ers. UCLA won the kind of
hard-fought points that, for the most part, they had lost during
the regular season.
The team couldn’t have picked a better time to suddenly
start racking up aces. By beating Long Beach State, the Bruins have
already surpassed expectations, and judging by the way UCLA played
Thursday, the team just might make a deep run in the NCAA
tournament.
After all, stranger things have happened.