The story after UCLA men’s volleyball’s loss to UC Irvine on Feb. 11 was that the team hadn’t been having good practices. That poor play carried over into the matches. But this week, some of that fire has returned – and that’s exactly what the Bruins say they need.
The No. 3 Bruins (12-2, 8-2 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) are set for a wild weekend away from home as they take on the No. 9 Pepperdine Waves (6-4, 5-4) and the No. 4 Stanford Cardinal (10-2, 8-2).
For the first 10 matches of the 2016 season, UCLA was perfect, but in the month of February, the team has already dropped two games to No. 5 Hawai’i and No. 11 Irvine.
But February rough patches are nothing unusual, especially for quarter system teams, said coach John Speraw.
“You get through the first four, five weeks of the season, and it’s exciting,” Speraw said. “All of a sudden midterms hit, and the energy, the excitement wanes and next thing you know, you have a couple of bad weeks. It’s not unusual. We just have to learn from it, understand it, study hard.”
What’s helping the Bruins overcome their down month are the quality practices they have had this past week.
“(Practice) has been better than we’ve seen in the past two weeks,” said junior setter Hagen Smith. “We’ve got our focus back a little bit – maybe a little more. We’re back to where our focus really should be.”
Staring through the net Friday stands a formidable and sizable Pepperdine squad. Every Waves player – bar their freshman libero – is listed at 6 feet or taller.
“Pepperdine’s playing style is a lot different than what we’re used to,” said redshirt sophomore middle blocker Oliver Martin. “They’re big and physical so we’re really just focusing in on preparing this week.”
Through nine games, 6-foot-8-inch redshirt senior middle blocker/opposite Matt Tarantino leads the Waves with 126 kills over 35 sets.
Come Sunday, UCLA will run into an offensive triple threat at Stanford.
Senior outside hitter Madison Hayden, redshirt junior Gabriel Vega and senior middle Conrad Kaminski all boast over 100 kills on the season – Hayden leading the way with 158.
Where the Cardinal roster features a variety of senior leaders, the Bruins themselves are led by nobody older than a junior. Much of the team’s production has been posted by their underclassmen.
“This is a big weekend and both these teams, at this moment, are playing a little bit better volleyball than we are,” Speraw said. “This presents some interesting matchup issues that we hope we can mitigate with the versatility of the 6-2, but we really don’t know how that versatility will match up with some of the size issues this week.