It’s a sign of the times, really.
Last year, a loss like the sweep suffered by the UCLA
men’s volleyball team at Long Beach State on Friday would
have caused currents of change significant enough to part even the
quasi-impenetrable Blue Curtain.
This year, though, with the Bruins looking to make a national
championship run, coach Al Scates fought back the urge to use an
itchy trigger finger to eject unproductive players from his
starting lineup for tonight’s match against UC Irvine at
Pauley Pavilion.
According to the latest AVCA poll, released Tuesday, Scates
might have lost the No. 1 ranking shared with BYU as the Bruins
(17-14, 11-4 MPSF) slipped to third, but he hasn’t lost his
head.
Take senior Chris Peña, for example. The middle blocker had
a horrible match against Long Beach State, failing to record a
single block and hitting .125 before Scates benched him in favor of
junior Allan Vince.
The 6-foot-6-inch Peña was outclassed by Long Beach setter
Tyler Hildebrand, who misdirected him to blocking areas time and
time again.
But Scates met privately with Peña in his office Monday,
and Peña responded with such a great practice later in the day
that he earned a vote of confidence from Scates.
“He corrected some problems in his blocking
technique,” Scates said. “And he’s such an
offensive threat. He piles up the points.”
Vince would have been a candidate to challenge Peña for
playing time, but he tore a hamstring while stretching after the
Long Beach match.
Senior Matt Shubin will be the middle blocker in uniform tonight
to back up Peña and junior Paul Johnson.
UC Irvine (8-14, 4-11) is having a tough season under
second-year coach John Speraw, a former UCLA player and assistant
coach, but the one thing Irvine has done well, coincidentally, is
block. The Anteaters currently lead the league in blocking.
But they are no slouches in hitting, either. The
Anteaters’ senior outside hitter Jimmy Pelzel is one of the
leading attackers in the nation, at 4.90 kills per game.
“You can figure out where the ball’s going, and
it’s still hard to stop him,” Scates said.
But it’s easy to guess who Scates expects to at least step
up and try.