UCLA men’s volleyball enters its final game of the season Friday, vying for a postseason berth with a win over No. 14 Stanford.
With their eyes on the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament, the Bruins will look to execute on the one aspect of the game that has given them trouble all season: serving.
Especially with the loss of sophomore setter Hagen Smith to a hand injury, coach John Speraw said that UCLA’s service strength will have to be greater than ever in order to make a playoff run.
The Bruins rank sixth in the NCAA for service aces per set with 1.52. Sophomore middle blocker Mitch Stahl has posted an ace in nine matches this season. However, when the Bruins’ serving abandons them, they lose matches. Despite outhitting No. 4 UC Irvine in the first set on Friday, No. 12 UCLA fell easily by a score of 25-19 because of 21 service errors.
When the Bruins did serve well in the second set, they were able to regain momentum and win the frame 25-21.
“We were serving the ball really well in the second set,” Stahl said after the 3-1 loss. “We stuck to our systems in the second set. The rest of the match we didn’t do that.”
UCLA currently sits in eighth place in the MPSF, a half game ahead of Stanford. A win on Friday would clinch an invite to the conference playoff tournament. The last time the two teams met, the Bruins swept the Cardinal 3-0 behind a .760 serving percentage with 18 errors.
Serving and overall execution are the focal points of UCLA’s last guaranteed week of training. While the team zeros in on its final target of the regular season, Speraw stressed the importance of focusing on individual nuances, as the Bruins have done all season.
“Anytime you have a week to prepare for an opponent, it gives you an opportunity to potentially work on some things, but I also talked to the team about our need to continue to focus on our side of the net,” Speraw said. “I don’t think there’s a time in the year ever when you’re not still working on fundamentals, and we have to get fundamentally better at what we’re doing because we obviously have room to improve.”
For a young Bruin squad, the team will only graduate two members after this season: redshirt junior Trent Kersten and redshirt senior Clayton Paullin. After transferring from BYU following his freshman year, Friday may be Paullin’s last time wearing the Bruin uniform.
“UCLA volleyball has been a really good experience for me,” Paullin said. “I’m just really happy that this is something I’ve gotten to do in my life.”