They’ve been as far as Hawaii and have gone to Colorado and back again. They’ve played in Centers (Galen), Pyramids (Walter) and a Pavilion, just not one named Pauley yet. For the No. 16 UCLA women’s volleyball team, that changes today.
Despite playing in Los Angeles twice, on the campuses of USC and LMU respectively, the Bruins will finally be playing in front of their own fans for a change as UCLA takes on No. 7 Stanford (9-2, 2-0).
For freshman setter Jordan Robbins, who will be playing her first home game as a Bruin, the match can’t come soon enough.
“I’m really excited. I was thinking about it (Saturday) night, with the crowd and everything – we’ve never had fans cheering for us,” Robbins said. “It’ll be exciting playing in an environment where people are actually on our side. It’s hard to play (12) matches not on your own court with people constantly yelling at you.”
UCLA (9-3, 0-2), who has dropped two straight matches, including being upset by Colorado last Friday, doesn’t get much of a welcome home gift with Stanford in town. The Cardinal enter today’s match winners of seven straight. Stanford has been absolutely dominant on the year, as seven of its nine victories have come via shutout, with the other two victories only taking four sets each.
While aware of the problems Stanford’s offense will pose, senior middle blocker Mariana Aquino feels her team has an offense capable of competing with the Cardinal.
“Obviously Stanford is really hard – they are a really good team and they have a really good offense – but we are one of the fastest teams in the Pac-12 right now. We have a fast offense,” Aquino said. “We are a pretty dynamic team. I think that’s our key to winning this game … our ability to use all players in the offense. I feel like we have the strongest offense this year.”
The Bruin’s offense, which has shown itself capable of scoring in bunches, may be up to the task of matching the Cardinal. Whether or not its defense is remains to be seen.
UCLA was repeatedly victimized by USC and Colorado in its matches against the two Pac-12 schools as the Trojans routinely attacked the middle of the Bruins defense while the Buffaloes regularly went on long scoring runs.
Still UCLA was competitive in both those losses, as six of the nine combined sets were decided by three points or fewer. However the Bruins found themselves on the losing end of four of those sets.
With a talented Stanford team before them, UCLA realizes that another long match is likely, and that it must be able to finish sets if it hopes to come away with its first conference victory of the year.
“We all know that we are that team that (is) probably going to go those long matches with teams,” said sophomore libero Karly Drolson. “We just need to be the one that is fighting and nothing drops and be that team that goes for everything.”