UCLA couldn’t upset the defending champion and current No. 1-ranked Penn State last Saturday night, but left knowing that the Bruins have the potential to be dangerous this season.
It was the first set of the match, and the score was 15-5. The team hadn’t seen the lead all set but was ready to turn things around.
And, for a while, they did. Freshman outside hitter Olga Strantzali and senior outside hitter Karsta Lowe scored five of the next six kills, closing the gap and bringing the score to 16-10.
Though the Bruins (3-2) went on to fall to the No. 1 Nittany Lions (4-1) 25-19, 27-25, 25-17, the team said it learned valuable lessons that will follow them into their practices back in Los Angeles.
“We learned we can hang with good teams,” Lowe said. “We’re a good team, and we’re able to play neck and neck with them, and that’s really important. Now that we know we can get there, we are going to hold ourselves to that standard.”
While the match wasn’t a win for the Bruins, the 16 tied scores and overtime the Bruins saw in set two showed this season’s team is an entirely new team.
“If you look at that match, they started on a 3-2 run, and they finished the match on an 8-2 run, but besides those runs, we were able to play with them at a level high enough to score points,” said coach Mike Sealy. “Last year is over; we’ve moved on, and we’re a different team now.”
Along with these lessons, the Bruins will also be returning home with their third win of the season. On Friday, the Bruins faced off against No. 9 Illinois in their first match of the Pac-12/Big Ten Challenge, a rematch from the 2011 national championship where the Bruins defeated the Fighting Illini 3-1.
UCLA swept Illinois (3-2) for an upset, winning in straight sets 25-17, 25-22, 25-22, with Lowe scoring a career-high 29 kills.
“As a senior, I’m definitely trying to take more of a leadership role, bring everyone together and be an example on the court,” Lowe said. “Our team feels really different. … It’s exciting having new faces and knowing we have the potential to be better than last season.”
After returning home, the Bruins will have less than a week of practice before heading to Honolulu on Thursday for the Outrigger Hotels and Resorts Volleyball Challenge, where they will first face San Francisco before moving on to face No. 20 Hawai’i and Utah State later in the weekend.
“We always focus on the next play, the next point, the next set,” Strantzali said. “We have a lot of talent.”