Volleyball starts strong, then falls

For the big, bad Bruins, Long Beach State’s Walter Pyramid seems to be a big, blue curse. For the fifth year in a row, the No. 5 UCLA men’s volleyball team lost to the 49ers in their blue pyramid arena, this time in a five-game heartbreaker, 30-23, 24-30, 26-30, 30-23, 16-14, in Long Beach on Wednesday night.

With the loss, the Bruins’ three-match winning streak was snapped. The team dropped to 10-8 overall and 8-7 in Mountain Pacific Sports Federation play. No. 14 Long Beach got its first win in three matches and improved to 7-8 and 4-7 (MPSF).

The Bruins’ last win at the Pyramid came on Jan. 25, 2002 in the Bruins’ then-season-opener, when they beat Long Beach in four sets. UCLA also lost in the NCAA finals to BYU in 2001 when the tournament was hosted by Long Beach in the Pyramid.

Despite a stumble at the gates in Game 1 for UCLA, the Bruins seemed to be playing their best volleyball of the year, mounting as large as an eight-point lead in game two and slamming a .559 team hitting percentage in game three. Steve Klosterman also looked to be on his way to yet another career night in front of his hometown crowd ““ he pounded 15 kills in the first three sets.

“Any time you hit .559 you’re going to win,” coach Al Scates said. “Everybody was on in that game.”

But after hitting .300 in Game 2 and .559 in Game 3, the UCLA offense’s efficiency dropped to .138 in Game 4. Despite a changeup in the matchups, with Scates substituting hitter Dylan Bowermaster for Garrett Muagututia and setter Matt Wade for Kevin Ker, the Bruin offense could not be revived.

“There was one guy (49er Dan Alexander) who went off on serving. He had a good streak of serving in the fourth game,” Scates said. “We used two timeouts to try to slow him down.”

But the timeouts could not salvage the struggling Bruins. In addition, the matchups in the middle were lopsided in favor of the 49ers on Wednesday. Although UCLA’s Brett Perrine hit .300, he only had five kills, and Bruin Jamie Diefenbach hit -.154 but was kept in because of his blocking numbers. Diefenbach led UCLA with 10 blocks on the night.

“(Klosterman and Paul George) had to carry the load,” said Scates. Klosterman had 27 kills at a .431 clip, and George pounded 19 kills for .394. “We lost because we didn’t take care of their middle attack and they took care of ours.”

Long Beach middles Dean Bittner and Teddy Liles made up half the team’s 70 kills and hit .432 and .632 respectively.

Game 5 could have gone either way, with neither team accumulating a lead greater than two points. The tension escalated when the score was tied at 13 and again at 14 after the Bruins had one shot at match point.

But what UCLA was hoping would not occur did occur, and 49er outside Paul Lotman went off on the Bruins at the end of the fifth and deciding set. The junior was kept to a .244 percentage, but he slammed three of Long Beach’s final four points, including the match winner.

“(Lotman) was better out of back court than in front court,” Scates said. “We should have had all three blockers up on him because that’s the guy they go to the most even though he wasn’t hitting a good percentage.”

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