The UCLA men’s volleyball team spent the weekend in Hawaii but were not able to breeze through their opponents. The Bruins have gone to the last set in all of their matches this season.
On Sunday night the UCLA men’s volleyball team arrived back in Westwood after participating in the Outriggers Hotel Invitational in Honolulu. Though the Bruins competed three nights in a row, they were still full of energy and had high spirits.
Today they will face No. 6 Long Beach State at 7 p.m. in Pauley Pavilion.
The invitational provided the Bruins with an opportunity to sharpen their game before Mountain Pacific Sports Federation play against Long Beach State. Coach John Speraw put out a variety of lineups this weekend to adequately rest his players, but also to test out his rotation options. Speraw saw many positives in his team’s performance but knows they haven’t reached perfection yet.
“We can improve in almost every area. We need to maintain our consistency of focus during the game,” Speraw said.
UCLA will try to keep up its focus, a key element of its game, tonight against Long Beach State. Late hitting errors were costly for the Bruins on Saturday night against Hawai’i.
While UCLA won two of their three matches in the invitational, Speraw saw that the team struggled with falling behind early on in the game. He wants his team to play with more intensity from the beginning to the end of the match.
Redshirt junior outside hitter Dane Worley, named Most Outstanding Player in the Hawai’i invitational, demonstrated strong play this weekend but believes that teamwork will be crucial.
“I definitely think we can work on communicating. Balls were landing in between us so we need to talk to each other,” said Worley.
Worley and junior outside hitter Robart Page represented UCLA on the all-tournament squad this weekend. They will need to maintain their high level of play tonight against Long Beach State, ranked just below UCLA.
When asked if fatigue may be an issue against Long Beach State, Page said, “I don’t think so. We all got some rest and we will be ready to go.”