Coming into Saturday’s NCAA Championship, the top-seeded
Pepperdine men’s volleyball team hadn’t dropped a fifth game
all-season long.
The Waves still haven’t.
Pepperdine defeated third-seeded UCLA 3-2 (30-23, 23-30, 24-30,
30-25, 15-10) in a thrilling championship final before 6,853 at
Pauley Pavilion Saturday to claim its fifth national title in
school history, and first since 1992.
“If I knew the magic to winning in five, I wouldn’t tell
anyone,” Pepperdine coach Marv Dunphy said. “Good
players make good players, and great players make great plays. It’s
a players’ game, and we have plenty of good players.”
For the Bruins (26-6), the loss was the first time they have
ever been defeated in an NCAA Championship match at Pauley
Pavilion, and keeps UCLA men’s volleyball coach Al Scates’
championship count to 18, with the last coming in 2000. It is only
the second batch of Bruin seniors to go through the UCLA men’s
volleyball program without having claimed a national title. Last
year’s was the first.
Yet only 40 minutes before the Waves (25-2) stormed the court in
celebration in front of an inconsolable UCLA bench, it was the
Bruins who appeared ready to be crowned kings of volleyball.
That’s when Pepperdine senior Sean Rooney took control of the
match.
With the Bruins having won Games 2 and 3 convincingly to take a
2-1 lead,
Rooney, the national Player of the Year and Final Four Most
Valuable Player, stemmed the tide in the Waves’ favor, registering
seven of his team-high 26 blocks in a pivotal Game 4 Pepperdine
victory that evened the match at 2-2.
“(Rooney) is a tough guy to stop; we tried to slow him
down,” said UCLA
men’s volleyball coach Al Scates, in his 43rd year coaching.
“He is the best I’ve seen recently.”
Feeding off of the momentum established by Rooney, Pepperdine
raced out to an
8-1 lead in the deciding Game 5, not so much a product of the
Waves’ dominance as UCLA’s committing errors when the pressure was
at its highest.
After consecutive hitting errors by Bruins Allan Vince, Steve
Klosterman and
Jonathan Acosta and a Rooney block, UCLA quickly found itself in
a 4-0 hole, and was never able to recover.
“We got in a big hole in Game 5,” Scates said.
“We fought back, but rally-point is too overwhelming to be
behind seven points and win.”
As Rooney laced his last kill of his college career crosscourt
to claim the title, he solidified his legacy in men’s college
volleyball lore while sending the Bruins home runner-ups for only
the sixth time in 24 championship matches.
Lost in the Pepperdine victory was the inspired performance of
Bruin senior Jonathan Acosta.
The shortest of UCLA’s corps of outside hitters at 6-foot-4,
Acosta rose up in the biggest game of his life with the best
performance of his life, smashing a game-high 29 kills and pacing
the Bruins’ attack for most of the championship final.
“Jonathan Acosta played the best I’ve ever seen him
play,” Scates said.
Yet not even Acosta’s offensive dominance was enough to overcome
UCLA missing its starting setter in Dennis Gonzalez, facing
collegiate volleyball’s best player in Rooney, and watching as the
ball simply didn’t go its way when it mattered the most.
“A few breaks here and there, who knows,” Scates
said.
Apparently, Pepperdine does.
“The ball just bounced our way in Game 5,” Dunphy
said.