The UCLA women’s volleyball team found itself on the wrong side of history Friday night.
Leading 12-2 and within one set of leaving Boulder, Colo. with a victory, No. 11 UCLA looked as if it would finally put away unranked Colorado. However, as they had done all match, the Buffaloes answered the Bruins.
Colorado stormed back from the 10-point deficit, outscoring UCLA 23-11 to tie the match at two sets apiece, forcing a decisive fifth set. The Buffaloes took the final set 15-12, capping the upset and the university’s first win against UCLA.
“When you are up 12-2 and a team is coming back and next thing you know it’s 13-12, it kind of takes a hit to the team and we didn’t really expect them to come back,” said freshman setter Jordan Robbins, who posted a double-double with 21 assists and 12 digs. “We kind of sat back and watched that happen for a little bit. Momentum is part of the game and it will make or break teams.”
If the Bruins (9-3, 0-2) didn’t expect a fight when they first arrived at Coors Events Center Friday night, they certainly knew they were in for one by the end of the first set. UCLA took the opening frame, but needed five set points in order to take the 1-0 set lead with the 29-27 victory.
In a match where momentum repeatedly swung back and forth, Colorado (9-2, 1-1) took a firm hold of the match in the second set. UCLA struggled defensively during the set, Robbins said, as the Bruins at times failed to get to their assignments and stick to the scouting report they had on the Buffaloes. The result was a comfortable 25-15 victory for Colorado that left UCLA taken aback, as the team hit -.024 for the set.
“The second set was kind of a surprise for us; I think we let them beat us,” said senior middle blocker Mariana Aquino. “(We were) being a little overconfident and then they surprised us. It was just a matter of them doing the right thing and us being a little out of the game”.
True to form for the game, the third set proved to be UCLA’s turn to answer. Trailing 17-12, the Bruins rallied to eventually take a 20-19 lead. The two teams battled back and forth before Aquino ended the set with one of her career-high 17 kills for a 26-24 UCLA win.
However, in the final two sets of the match, Colorado’s momentum finally broke UCLA, as the Bruins failed to put the home team away by coughing up leads in both of the final two sets. UCLA held an early 4-1 lead in the final set before Colorado went on runs of both 4-1 and 5-1 to eventually take an 11-8 lead that it never surrendered.
Throughout the match, the Bruins failed to stifle the Buffaloes’ runs before it was too late, and could not overcome the defensive lapses that plagued them for stretches during sets.
“We kind of do it sometimes where we get into these little funks and we are just making these little mistakes that are controllable, that we are doing, it’s not the other team’s doing,” said sophomore libero Karly Drolson. “We just need to get back in practice and go back to fundamentals and the basics and we’ll learn from what we did and get better.”