On Friday night the UCLA women’s volleyball team went into rival territory and accomplished what it had never done before.
Traveling to play USC, the Bruins defeated the Trojans for the first time since the Galen Center was opened in 2007.
“We wanted to break that streak and get our first win over here,” coach Andy Banachowski said. “We wanted to be able to sweep ‘SC this year, so we are very happy that we accomplished those goals.”
With the five-set win (25-17, 14-25, 25-16, 17-25, 15-12) in front of a raucous crowd of 4,619, the No. 7 Bruins (18-6, 8-3 Pac-10) recorded their second defeat of the No. 17 Trojans (15-9, 4-8) and maintained their second-place tie with Stanford.
With each team taking turns at dominating the first four sets, the fifth set seemed like it could have gone either way. Sophomore middle blocker Amanda Gil was the playmaker that helped UCLA gain its sixth win in a row.
“My coach looked at me and was like, “˜You need to be big this game.’ So with it being the fifth game and we were playing USC, it just made me want to do better even more,” Gil said.
Gil helped put UCLA in a strong position at the beginning of the set, getting a kill and a block early on. She then slammed two kills to push the score to 14-10. The Trojans then threatened the Bruin win with a kill and a block from sophomore outside hitter Alex Jupiter to close the gap at 14-12.
Gil sealed the match with the kill on a quick set from freshman setter Lauren Cook.
“The beginning of the match we weren’t using her very much, which was done purposely, and then at the end she had kills and blocks, and there was no way we were not going to get to her,” Banachowski said. “She knows how to get a kill.”
USC saw strong play from Jupiter throughout the match. Jupiter came out particularly strong in the fourth set with eight kills and two blocks, eliminating any hope of the Bruins beating the Trojans in four sets.
“(Jupiter) is a very great hitter angle-wise,” Gil said. “We tried to take that angle away from her and to make her hit her weak shot.”
The first set seemed to set the tone for a close match with seven ties and four lead changes. Down 8-7, UCLA took full control. A 5-0 run boosted the Bruins ahead 12-8, and UCLA eventually furthered its advantage to 22-13.
USC scored three points in a row to force a UCLA time-out, but the Bruins were able to seal the set off 25-17 following the time-out.
The second set was a complete flip-flop from the first one, as UCLA was never able to find its rhythm and had a lowly .029 hitting percentage. With the score tied at 7-7, USC started to chip away at points with four kills to go up 13-11. USC went on a huge 12-3 run to finish the second set off and tie the match.
“I think they made some coaching adjustment, and we let the crowd and lights get into our head,” senior opposite Kaitlin Sather said. “We just let the momentum slip away and then had to rebuild it for ourselves. We were beating up ourselves rather than going after the opponent.”
UCLA pulled itself together for the third set. This time the Bruins held the Trojans to a .053 hitting percentage. The Bruins never trailed as big kills from Gil, sophomore middle blocker Katie Camp and freshman outside hitter Bojana Todorovic helped gain an early 7-4 lead.
The Trojans accumulated 10 attack errors in the third set, three of which gave UCLA points 20, 21, and 22. Three straight UCLA kills put away the set.