It was all about Steve Klosterman.
The senior from Long Beach put up career-high numbers Wednesday night against No. 10 Cal State Northridge (8-8, 6-5 MPSF) and helped turn what was supposed to be a competitive, fight-to-the-finish matchup into a three-game rout by the No. 7 UCLA men’s volleyball team (9-7, 7-6), 30-16, 30-23, and 30-26.
Coming off a road trip to the Bay Area where they picked up a loss at Pacific but a win at Stanford, the Bruins seemed to have learned a lesson and adapted a foolproof but simple offensive strategy: Set the ball to the hot hitter.
“That (strategy) is something that is so very basic to the game,” said coach Al Scates. “It hasn’t been a problem until this year. Situations arose where we didn’t make the right choice in the past, but I think Kevin (Ker) definitely knows what to do at this point. He got the ball to Klosterman in good situations.”
The hot-hitter strategy seemed to work from the onset of the first game. Freshman setter Ker was able to get the ball to Klosterman early and help the Bruins take the first game easily.
“(Klosterman) was amazing,” Ker said. “He came out ready to play. We need him to do that every day. Coach has really been pushing towards setting the hot hitter, and it seems to work.”
The second and third games saw much of the same ““ Ker setting the ball for Klosterman to kill. CSUN was able to close the gap and even go ahead early in both games, but they simply couldn’t handle the firepower blasting from the other side of the net. An hour and 20 minutes was all it took to finish off the Matadors. The Matadors finished with a 0.200 attack percentage with only two team blocks.
UCLA was able to defeat CSUN on the road last month, but the last two times the Matadors visited Pauley, they were able to pull off five-game upsets in both matches against UCLA. And as CSUN is currently ranked higher in the conference standings than UCLA, this was certainly a big win for the men’s volleyball team.
“It helped a lot that our team did so well in the beginning game,” Klosterman said. “We put it all together, blocking-wise and serving, we got in a good rhythm and we just carried on from there.”
After the night had finished, Klosterman had put up career-high numbers: 31 kills and an unheard-of 0.667 attack percentage. Klosterman’s previous career high was last year, also against CSUN, with 30. But that match had four games, and he was able to put up more kills Wednesday night in only three.
“I had a lot of kills, but we did play pretty well in general,” Klosterman said. “If it’s me or (Paul) George or Garrett (Muagututia) one night, you have to find the hot hitter and hopefully everyone else will play well around him. That’s how we’ll really win all the games.”
Muagututia and George both contributed nine kills of their own and Ker had 51 assists on the night. But clearly, it was the Steve Klosterman show.
This Friday gives UCLA a huge opportunity against No. 3 UC Santa Barbara ““ a game that, if won, could carry the Bruins far up the conference and national rankings. And if Klosterman plays the same way he did Wednesday night, he could very well be the key.
“Steve Klosterman stayed hot until his last swing.” Scates said. “He played his best match of the year.”