It’s clear that the UCLA women’s volleyball team has high expectations for itself.
After hearing the players describe their play during the past two matches, one wouldn’t think they were coming off back-to-back sweeps.
Even if it didn’t play up to the Bruin standard, No. 13 UCLA (7-1) played well enough to win its home opener against Pepperdine Wednesday and then took down Cal State Bakersfield on the road Thursday, both in straight sets.
In its 25-20, 25-20, 25-15 win Wednesday, UCLA held off an early Pepperdine scoring run and led the rest of the match. With the Bruins up 15-10 in the first set, the Waves went on a 6-1 run, forcing a 16-16 tie. After that, UCLA went back on top, and a block by junior middle blocker Katie Camp and sophomore outside hitter Rachael Kidder gave the Bruins their set-winning point. UCLA led the entire second and third sets and didn’t give up significant runs in those sets.
Kidder said the Bruins must improve on maintaining leads to avoid those runs.
“Every time we got a big lead, we’d kind of take it easy and let them back in, which is something we need to work on,” Kidder said. “I feel like that happened all three sets.”
Senior outside hitter Dicey McGraw and Kidder led UCLA with 11 kills each, and the Bruins hit .255 as a team, while Pepperdine hit .121 for the match. The Bruins won the blocking battle eight to six.
The Bruins then went back on the road to take on Cal State Bakersfield Thursday and started out sluggish in their 25-14, 25-17, 25-22 win. Coach Mike Sealy said the team couldn’t prepare for Bakersfield as much as for their previous opponents because they played the previous night and had to travel. He also said that the team took the court one minute late for their warm-up and described the warm-up as “lackadaisical.”
Trailing 7-4 early in the first set, UCLA went on a 9-0 run to take a 13-7 lead. The Bruins held on to their lead for the rest of the set and then led for the whole second set. In the third, UCLA’s substitutes played and ran the first-team’s system, not the system the reserves usually run in practice. Sealy was encouraged by what he saw.
“We put them into this match in the first team’s system, which they have zero practice with,” Sealy said. “There was a couple little confusing points here and there and that’s expected, but they played
with heart. I thought they played well, they played tough.”
Though they won in three sets, Sealy said the team had defensive issues against Bakersfield which resulted from undisciplined play.
“Defense was tragic tonight,” Sealy said. “As far as posture, as far as responsibilities, we’re blowing very easy assignments.”
UCLA only recorded three blocks, while Bakersfield had six blocks.
Sophomore outside hitter Mari Hole led the Bruins with 13 kills, and the team hit for a .415 clip.
“The setters gave me really good sets, so I had a lot of good opportunities,” Hole said. “So then it’s easy to get kills.”
McGraw hit six kills in two sets and hit the 1,000-kill mark for her career. She now has 1,001 kills, and is the 25th UCLA player to reach the milestone.
Despite the two wins, McGraw said her team still has to make a bit of a jump to be ready for the looming Pac-10 competition.
“I thought we passed well, I thought we dug well, I thought we blocked well and I thought we hit well, but we did everything good, not great,” McGraw said of her team’s play against Bakersfield. “We’re a great team, so we should be able to play (great) all the time.”