PROVO, Utah “”mdash; At home, on the road, and now, even on a
neutral court perched high up in the Rocky Mountains, it just
didn’t matter.
UCLA simply can’t beat Long Beach State ““ anywhere,
anytime, anymore.
The No. 3-seeded Bruins were swept by the No. 2-seeded 49ers for
the third time this season in the semifinals of the MPSF Tournament
on Thursday night.
The 30-25, 30-27, 30-28 loss ended the Bruins’ season, but
that wasn’t even the worst of it for UCLA, which for the
first time in school history will now have gone four consecutive
years without winning an NCAA championship.
“It says that other programs have been better than ours in
the past four years, said Scates, who has won an NCAA-record 18
titles. “But we’re coming back.”
UCLA (24-6) was essentially just one win away from clinching at
least an at-large berth into the NCAA Tournament after top-seeded
BYU beat No. 4-seeded Pepperdine 30-27, 27-30, 30-27, 24-30, 15-12
earlier in the evening.
Now the Bruins have as good of a chance at getting that at-large
bid as Scates does sponsoring an overseas recruiting trip.
Smith Fieldhouse was not kind to Scates, who had scattered boos
sprinkled down on him from the rafters during pre-game
introductions due to prior comments he had made about BYU’s
foreign players. Then again, UCLA hasn’t taken a match in the
building since winning its last MPSF Tournament in 2001.
The high altitude makes the site a place where UCLA serves go
long and hopes of winning die. That makes it very unlikely the
Bruins would take solace from Long Beach State coach Alan Knipe
calling them, following the match, the best serving team the 49ers
have faced this season.
“We’re not a good blocking team, and we
couldn’t serve hard, so (Long Beach State) had its pick of
hitters,” Scates said.
Long Beach State (27-5) hit .464 and had four hitters firing
lasers and recording double-digit kills, including Scott Touzinsky
(14), David Lee (13), Jeff Wootton (13) and Duncan Budinger
(11).
Meanwhile, UCLA struggled, hitting .295. Freshman opposite
hitter and the team’s leading attacker, Steve Klosterman, was
pulled from the match in Game 2 after two consecutive hitting
errors caused him to mutter an expletive and garner a warning from
the referee.
Senior Marcin Jagoda came off the bench to notch a team-high 11
kills.
“Marcin played great,” said Scates, who eventually
emptied his entire bench. “That’s why we had a
chance.”
But even Jagoda disagreed.
“We didn’t play well until it was too late,”
he said. “We didn’t come out ready to play.”
Junior middle blocker Paul Johnson had 10 kills (.625), and
senior Chris Peña had a team-high four blocks in his final
match as a Bruin.
Senior J.T. Wenger started, but was forced out of action in the
middle of Game 1 due to a sore right shoulder that had recently
been bothering him.
Junior Jonathan Acosta came on to slam eight kills, but
UCLA’s depth wasn’t nearly enough to wipe away the
Bruins’ long faces.
Nothing was.