UCLA women’s volleyball has run a left-side heavy offense this season.
The Bruins’ outside hitters, freshman Jenny Mosser and senior Reily Buechler, have recorded a combined 1,433 swings this season – accounting for almost half of the team’s total.
This weekend, the outsides weren’t clicking, and No. 18 UCLA (13-8, 6-6 Pac-12) was swept by No. 11 Washington (18-5, 8-4) on Sunday.
Mosser and Buechler managed hitting percentages of -0.069 and 0.105 against the Huskies.
Coach Michael Sealy said that the right-side blockers for Washington were bigger than its left-sides so it was tougher on the outsides.
“We weren’t as well prepared against bigger blocking teams than we’re used to seeing,” Sealy said. “If I could go back in time I would change maybe some of the flow of practice and put them in more out-of-system situations.”
Against the Washington State Cougars on Friday, a team the Bruins had not lost to in Pullman, Washington, since 2002, UCLA hit -0.036 in the last set.
Washington State posted 21 blocks in its 3-2 win over UCLA.
“I think Washington State did a good job of blocking, scheming against our offense,” said senior setter Sarah Sponcil.
This is not the first time Sealy has attributed a loss to an unbalanced offense.
After UCLA’s 3-1 loss against Utah, Sealy said the team was out of sync because of the uneven distribution of balls.
“I think when we’re balanced we’re great. … We’re a little bit left-side dominant,” Sealy said after the match against the Utes. “So if you tally up all the sets, (freshman opposite) Mac May didn’t get enough swings on the right and I thought the middles probably didn’t get enough swings in the middle.”
On the flip side, a more balanced attack helped the Bruins sweep the Arizona Wildcats this season. Five UCLA players recorded at least six kills in that match.
“I thought we passed the ball well, so our hitters all got good swings and our setter was able to move the ball around,” said Sealy after the game against the Wildcats. “So it helped offensively that we weren’t in a whole lot of out of system situations, it helped a ton.”
However, UCLA has failed to pull off wins against big blocking teams like Washington, Washington State and Stanford.
Buechler said that it was difficult to set up a defense against a team that ran a much more balanced offense.
“You can literally set to anyone on that team and the ball is going to go down,” Buechler said. “There wasn’t a lot of scheming on our side, it wasn’t like ‘Oh, we’re going to block this person every single time,’ like how they do against us.”
Buechler said that most teams realize through scouting that the Bruins rely heavily on their outsides and thus have big blockers on her and Mosser. Buechler added that she and Mosser will be focusing on reducing their errors.
“Not swinging when there is a huge block there, tipping, just figuring something else out instead of getting blocked or hitting way out,” Buechler said. “It just comes down to being smarter in those situations because we are in those situations a lot.”