The women’s volleyball team seized its final opportunities to impress the NCAA selection committee this past week, as two impressive performances against top-10 opponents helped the Bruins earn the No. 14 seed in the national tournament.
On Wednesday night, UCLA (23-7, 14-6 Pac-12) sprung a monumental upset, handing No. 1 USC (30-2, 18-2) its only home loss of the season in a nail-biting five-set match. Less than 48 hours later, the Bruins almost pulled off another shocker, taking a 2-1 lead over the No. 8 Stanford Cardinal (22-6, 16-4) before faltering to lose in five sets.
“(In the NCAA Tournament) you know that you are going to have to play good teams on back-to-back nights,” said coach Michael Sealy. “Bottom line is that we walked out of the locker room with our heads held high knowing that we played two tough teams tough.”
The Bruins fell down 9-2 early against the Trojans and it looked as if they were headed for another straight-set stomping, just as the Trojans had handed them earlier in the season at Pauley Pavilion.
But then UCLA came back to win the first set. And the third set. And in the fifth and final set, they dealt USC just its second loss of the season.
“They’re impressive,” said Sealy of the Trojans. “They do a lot of amazing things, and they’ve got weaknesses just like everybody. We had to exploit their weaknesses and serve tough and get them out of system, take some chances and it just worked out.”
One USC weakness: The Trojans were a lot less effective when star senior outside hitter Samantha Bricio was stuck in the back row.
In the first set, Bricio had a 10-5 lead when she took the ball to serve, but the Bruins trapped her in that rotation by going on a seven-point run. Bricio would not get to leave the back row until UCLA already had an 18-13 lead. They closed out that set, and the theme continued from beginning to end.
“I mean (Bricio) is definitely a force front and back row,” said junior libero Taylor Formico. “But even at the end there in the fifth set, she was in the front row getting kill after kill, and then she got in the back row and we kind of got back in it. She’s a good player, so we definitely like her in the back row more.”
In the last set, Bricio picked up her match-leading 23rd kill to pull the Trojans within one point at 12-11, but it forced the offensive star into the back row to serve. Bricio is the best server in the country – she leads the nation by wide margins in both aces and aces per set – but the Bruins got the side out on her first serve, and never looked back as they won the final set 15-12.
Whereas Bricio carried the USC attack almost single-handedly, producing twice as many kills as any other Trojan, UCLA relied on a balanced attack, as four players produced double-digit kills: middle blocker Claire Felix and outside hitters Reily Buechler, Jordan Anderson and Jessyka Ngauamo.
“Oh, it was wonderful,” said Anderson, a junior. “All three of us (outside hitters) were just on all cylinders. Even the middles were getting involved, and everyone was getting theirs. It felt great to have all the outsides clicking in one game.”
After finishing off the Trojans, the Bruins faced another tall task on Friday night – literally. The Cardinal starting lineup featured no players under 6 feet tall, including a middle blocker who stood at 6 feet, 8 inches. On the other hand, the UCLA starting lineup had four players under six feet. Redshirt sophomore Ngauamo, standing at 5 feet, 11 inches, was forced to get creative as she recorded 10 kills.
“Being a smaller attacker, you’ve got to keep the ball in front so you can see what moves the blockers are making on you because you have to use them to your advantage,” Ngauamo said. “Most of the time I use them as a target to hit the ball off.”
Although the Cardinal came back to win on the Bruins’ senior night, senior defensive specialist Karly Drolson looked at the loss positively.
“With this loss, it kind of brings the team back to earth (after the USC upset) so that we aren’t too cocky as we head into the tournament,” Drolson said. “Now when we go into practice on Monday we can really focus on our weaknesses so we can really pull it all together to make a run.”
The loss might have kept them from becoming overly confident, but the win over top-ranked USC made sure the Bruins will be confident heading into the NCAA Tournament.
“It means that it doesn’t matter who’s No. 1,” Anderson said. “It doesn’t matter who’s on the other side of the net. We can beat anybody. I think that gives our team a lot of confidence in each other, in the coaches, and in the whole program; just trust the process and we can beat any opponent.”
Their first opponent will be Lipscomb, which will visit Pauley Pavilion on Friday night. If UCLA can win that match, it will move on to host the winner of Michigan-Santa Clara.