Preparing for Bay Area rematches

W. VOLLEYBALL Friday, 7 p.m. v. Cal Berkeley
Saturday, 7 p.m. v. Stanford Palo Alto

The end of the season is within reach, but there are three very
big obstacles in the way of the women’s volleyball team
before postseason play begins in three weeks.

No. 5 UCLA will encounter a huge test of strength this weekend
as it travels up to the Bay Area to face off against No. 12
California (17-6, 6-6 Pac-10) and No. 2 Stanford (20-2, 11-1
Pac-10) tomorrow and Saturday. The Bruins will be running the
gauntlet in the next couple of weeks, with three of their next four
opponents ranked 12th or higher in the AVCA national poll.
Crosstown rival and sixth-ranked USC will be next on the agenda,
the following Friday.

“It’s a tough time in the season because it’s
getting to the end,” outside hitter Katie Carter said.
“This is really when we have to step it up the most. This is
when it matters. All those wins in the beginning of the season were
great, but we need to work even harder now to maintain our
record.”

The team is looking to build up momentum going into the
postseason, and in their first chance to show what they are made
of, the Bruins will attempt to establish the same dominance they
had over Cal in their first meeting, one month ago. In the October
match, UCLA swept the Bears, but the Bruins left feeling a little
unfulfilled by not being able to contain Cal’s Morgan Beck.
The outside hitter had a match-high 16 kills and .467 hitting
percentage, the highest on the floor that night.

“Cal’s got very strong outside hitters, which I
think has been the strength of their team,” UCLA coach Andy
Banachowski said. “Beck had a good game against us last time,
and we did a good job of shutting down their other outsides. We
certainly want to do better against Beck.”

But the match that will surely be weighing on the Bruins’
minds is Saturday’s, against Stanford. The Cardinal handed
UCLA its first loss of the season one month ago in a heartbreaking
5-game thriller, and ended the Bruins’ 20-match winning
streak at the time. Since then, Stanford has leapfrogged four
positions from sixth to second and is on a 10-match winning streak
of its own.

“They’re always a tough opponent, but I think that
we’re a lot better than we were the last time we played
them,” Carter said. “I think that we’ve also
keyed in on a lot of their techniques and the way they play.
We’ve based our defense and our play around that and
we’ve been working on it for the past few weeks. I think
we’re a lot more prepared this time.”

“We’ve progressed, too,” middle blocker Nana
Meriwether said. “Coming off this (weekend’s wins
against Arizona State and Arizona) we have momentum, so it’ll
be a good match.”

To keep up with Stanford this time around, not only will the
Bruins have to contain Cardinal outside hitters Kristin Richards
and Cynthia Barboza, but they will also have to turn more focus on
middle blocker Foluke Akinradewo. Akinradewo was the
Cardinal’s most efficient hitter in the previous matchup,
hitting 18 kills at a .457 clip.

“We’ve been working on a defense that will counter
their offense, especially their middle hitter,” Meriwether
said. “We’re looking to put up a better block and
better diggers in the back row.”

“Hopefully we can serve a little tougher and that will
help take Foluke out of the match a little bit,” Banachowski
said. “She was pretty tremendous against us last time and …
they’ve got some quality ball players out there. We’ll
try and be a little bit more cognizant of Foluke and try and make
sure to really have the blockers we want on her and still try to be
effective against their outsides.

“I think it would be great for us to have a winning
weekend on the road up there, to really put the stamp on the year
that we’re ready to get into postseason play,”
Banachowski said.

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