UCLA’s men’s volleyball coach, the legendary Al Scates, is one win away from securing his 1200th career victory, but he’s more concerned with the immediate future.
“It’s more important to win three out of four and guarantee ourselves a playoff spot,” Scates said. “I’m going to get 1200, I’m not worried about that. The immediate concern is to wrap this regular season up well.”
With just four regular season games remaining on the schedule, the No. 7 Bruins are battling for a playoff spot. Only the top eight out of 12 teams qualify for the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation postseason tournament. Five teams have already clinched tournament berths, but the remaining three bids are still up for grabs.
The Bruins (14-11, 9-9 MPSF), who currently sit at seventh place in the conference standings, hit the road this weekend looking to solidify their spot in the playoffs.
The Bruins will take on No. 8 Long Beach State today. The 49ers are one game behind the Bruins and sit in eighth place. Last time these two teams met, Long Beach State came into Pauley Pavilion and swept the Bruins 3-0. The Bruins, in fact, have not beaten the 49ers since 2008. Redshirt sophomore opposite Jack Polales said that revenge is definitely on his mind.
“It’s big motivation to stay in the playoff hunt to beat them,” Polales said. “And it’s big motivation knowing that we’ve lost the last three times we’ve played them, which traditionally doesn’t happen to UCLA against Long Beach, so we need to turn that around.”
In order to turn things around, the Bruins will have to slow down Long Beach middle blocker Antwain Aguillard who is leading the MPSF in hitting percentage during conference play with a .488 clip.
Saturday, the Bruins will head south seeking more revenge at UCSD. The Tritons also swept the Bruins at home earlier this season.
“Anytime you get swept in three, you always want to come back and prove that that’s not the right outcome,” sophomore quick hitter Thomas Amberg said. “Especially when you’re at UCLA, you always expect to win.”
Being from the San Diego area, Amberg also noted that he’s always excited to play in front of family and friends at UCSD.
Polales said that the UCSD loss is still fresh in his mind.
“Losing to UCSD hurt a lot on our home floor,” Polales said. “None of us were happy after that game so we’ve got to come out, avenge the loss, get into the playoffs, and then make up our losses this season in the playoffs.”
The Bruins will be looking to buck their recent trend of losing on the road, after losing back-to-back games last week at Pepperdine and USC.
“We have to win. We’re running out of time,” Scates said. “We didn’t play well against ‘SC but I think we’re ready to come back and play well.”
Scates added that he doesn’t think it creates a problem for his team to play on back-to-back nights, citing wins at Hawai’i that came on consecutive nights.