Friday night was a trap match for UCLA men’s volleyball.
The Bruins, fresh off a win over the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos just two days prior, traveled up the coast to face the same underdog conference foe – this time in a daunting gym where the home team was 8-1 coming into the evening.
But No. 4 UCLA (17-3, 13-3 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) returned to Westwood unscathed, cruising by No. 9 UCSB (13-8, 9-7) in straight sets (25-22, 25-15, 25-23). Coach John Speraw, who cautioned that it’s never easy to repeat a performance in back-to-back matches, was left impressed by his team.
“We were so mentally prepared and played with such great competitive energy,” Speraw said. “I was really proud of the way we came out. We were focused and disciplined in the way we treated our preparation for the match.”
Two of Friday’s three sets were close, but the Bruins seemed to be in control the whole time. Aggressive serving set the tone, as UCLA often caught UCSB out of rotation and stretched the Gauchos’ defense thin with long – but controlled – rallies.
“I think playing up in their gym is a big advantage for them,” said junior setter Hagen Smith. “They’ve got a good student body that comes out, they’re loud and it’s a small environment. But we got on them early – stayed on them the whole time and put pressure on them – and that really got them out of their groove.”
In many ways, it was difficult to pinpoint just one aspect of the visitors’ game that stood out.
“We were serving the ball really well, we had a bunch of guys score points tonight,” said junior middle blocker Mitch Stahl. “To build off of that, we played really good defense, we transitioned the ball well, too. We’re playing with that swagger that we had at the beginning of the year.”
SET SIX: Listen in as Stahl joins this week’s volleyball podcast.
The season began with a 10-match win streak, but Speraw said Friday was probably the most competitive he had seen his team play so far. That aggression opened up opportunities for UCLA to show off some of its firepower.
On Wednesday, the Bruin victory was highlighted by the offensive performances of sophomore outside hitters Jake Arnitz and JT Hatch, along with freshman setter/hitter Micah Ma’a.
The trio made more noise Friday, as Arnitz led the team with 12 kills while Hatch and Ma’a combined for 11. Stahl joined the top of the stats sheet with seven kills and a .500 hitting percentage.
Ma’a and Stahl shined on the service line. With his 40th and 41st aces of the year, Ma’a set a new UCLA freshman record – and there are still eight matches remaining in the regular season.
The sweep over Santa Barbara was just as much a mental victory as it was another “W” in the record books for a Bruin squad with NCAA Tournament aspirations.
“We’re starting to feel the urgency of the end of the year, where we’re stepping up and coming out hard for our matches,” Stahl said. “We executed our game plan better than we did Wednesday and we were just a machine out there tonight.”
UCLA hosts a pair of schools in nonconference play next week, starting with No. 8 Ball State (14-3) on Monday evening. The Cardinals are on an 11-match win streak but have played just one MPSF team so far in 2016, falling in a sweep to the No. 3 Stanford Cardinal.
