On Sunday afternoon, the UCLA women’s volleyball team was not at all where they pictured they would be.
A valiant, but fruitless, effort to take down No. 1 Stanford in Palo Alto on Friday evening had sluggishly carried over into a Sunday matchup against a Pac-12-worst California squad.
The Bruins already dropped the first set of the match and were merely one point away from losing another in the third and digging themselves into a deeper hole against the Bears in UCLA’s 3-1 win.
“I told them to wake up because they looked like they were sleepwalking,” coach Michael Sealy said. “We didn’t have that look in our eye, like we wanted to be there and compete.”
After tying the set at 24, courtesy of freshman outside hitter Olga Strantzali’s sideline kill, sophomore middle blocker Claire Felix, who entered the game off of the bench, sent her seventh kill of the match across the net.
A Cal error on the next serve handed UCLA the third set and from that point on, UCLA never looked back.
“We came back with a vengeance, had a little more fire and energy,” Felix said. “We knew we were down on communication and just focused on earning points for ourselves and taking the match into our own hands.”
In a well-rounded team victory for the Bruins, five separate players on the roster recorded at least eight kills, with two others recorded at least 13 digs. Senior setter Julie Consani managed 54 assists to complement the Bruins 3-1 win over the Golden Bears.
A standout among the Bruins was Felix who entered the game after the first set from the bench and recorded nine kills and tallying a .400 hitting percentage.
“We were working on a lot of different aspects in practice recently, just making sure we were clicking and they were great – Julie and I were really clicking,” said Felix.
Two days prior to Sunday’s win at Berkeley, UCLA was shown possibly its toughest test of the season when it was tasked with taking on undefeated, No. 1 Stanford on the road.
The Bruins, entering the match 16 spots behind the Cardinal in the national rankings, never let the match get too far out of their reach, losing three of the four sets by an average of only three points and even managing to steal the third set away from the Cardinal, 25-20.
“I think our overall execution is what we could’ve done better,” Karsta Lowe, senior outside hitter, said. “But we did learn that we can definitely beat them, even though it was frustrating to lose that close a match.”
Throughout the match, the UCLA attack remained strong with Lowe leading the way with 26 kills, while two other Bruins, freshman outside hitter Reily Buechler and redshirt sophomore outside hitter Haley Lawless, provided 16 and 13 kills respectively.
“We didn’t execute, but we played with a lot of heart to get into those situations,” Sealy said. “It was a pretty great opportunity to get fourth set, but we needed to know where we fit in with these teams, but in the end our girls can walk out heads held high.”
Next up for the Bruins is another tough test with a true home matchup on UCLA’s campus Friday against the No. 3 Washington Huskies, where the Bruins will try once again to spoil the Huskies perfect, undefeated record.