If the UCLA men’s volleyball team thought it was going to
steamroll its way to the NCAA Championship this season,
Saturday’s match against Hawai’i showed that the Bruins
need to adopt a different mindset.
Coming off a seven-match winning streak, No. 1 UCLA was swept by
the No. 3 Warriors 30-25, 30-26, 30-25 in front of a shocked crowd
of 1,829 at Pauley Pavilion, UCLA’s largest home crowd this
season.
“The loss showed us that we’re not as good as we
thought we were,” outside hitter Brennan Prahler said.
“We obviously have a lot to work on for the rest of the
season.”
Falling to Hawai’i was not only the Bruins’ first
home loss of the year, but it seriously derailed UCLA’s
chances of grabbing the No. 1 spot in the MPSF and the right to
host the conference playoffs.
Despite having beaten Hawai’i in four games the night
before, Saturday night’s loss dropped UCLA into third place
in the conference. The Bruins now trail both Hawai’i and
Pepperdine by a game and a half for the top spot in the MPSF.
“They completely outplayed us at every facet in the
game,” UCLA coach Al Scates said. “In fact, I
don’t know one thing we did as well as a team.”
“They were just better than us tonight.”
A microcosm of the Bruins’ performance came in the second
game, with the score tied 26-26 and a chance for UCLA to swing the
match in its favor.
After a kill by Hawai’i outside hitter Matt Bender and an
ace by Pedro Azenha, the Bruins fell behind 28-26 and never
mustered a charge after that.
“We let them do whatever they wanted to do,” UCLA
senior middle blocker Paul Johnson said. “That was the most
disappointing part.”
“We had scouted their hitting tendencies and there was
nothing we could do to stop it.”
Johnson, UCLA’s top hitter coming into the match, was part
of the Bruins’ hitting attack that was thoroughly outplayed
by the Warriors at the net.
Hawai’i out-blocked the Bruins14-4 and held UCLA’s
vaunted offense, ranked fourth in the nation at the beginning of
the week, to a lowly .265 hitting percentage.
“It was simple,” middle blocker Allan Vince said.
“We didn’t block, they did, and that was the reason why
we lost.”
Throughout the match, the Warriors had two to three guys up to
block UCLA hitters, while the Bruins failed to position their
hitters in a position where they wanted the ball.
In fact, UCLA middle blockers Vince and Johnson combined for
only 34 hitting attempts during the full length of the match.
“When we can’t pass the ball, we can’t set the
middle,” Scates said. “And when we can’t set the
middle, we are going to lose.”
In comparison, Hawai’i’s top two hitters, Bender and
Azenha, combined for a total of 52 hitting attempts and finished
with 16 and 11 kills, respectively.
Their combined prowess at the net, along with the
Warriors’ six service aces, spelled doom for the Bruins by
the end of the night.
Despite the disappointing performance, Scates found a few
positives to take away for his team.
“It was definitely a disappointing effort,” Scates
said. “We would have liked to play them again on our home
court.”
“But it’s a long season and I told the guys we just
need to move on from this loss.”