Two hours and 42 minutes after Friday night’s opening serve floated over the net in Pauley Pavilion, lanky Long Beach State sophomore Eric Ensing halted UCLA’s home winning streak at three matches and cut any comeback aspirations short with one last kill.
Coach John Speraw, however, wasn’t focused on the final play of his team’s loss following his postgame talk.
It was what happened earlier that lingered in his mind.
After easily handling the visiting 49ers in the opening set, the Bruins dropped the next two on missed opportunities and misplays that proved disastrous in their five-set loss (25-20, 23-25, 25-27, 25-23, 11-15).
“I just really felt that there were so many things that we didn’t execute on, especially in sets two and three,” Speraw said. “It’s obviously unfortunate that we put ourselves in a position to go five (sets) and in a fifth set anything can happen. They just made some plays that we didn’t.”
No. 9 UCLA (10-7, 6-7 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) fell to eighth place in the conference standings and No. 10 Long Beach State (10-8, 7-8) is almost certain to jump ahead in the national rankings with its season sweep of the Bruins.
The Bruins played one of their most competitive matches of the season, but serving struggles proved especially costly in the second and third sets.
UCLA committed 25 errors from the service line over the course of the match with five in the second set and 10 in the third set alone. The significance is clear when looking at the final scores of those losses: 25-23, 27-25.
Although overshadowed by the loss, players all across the UCLA court set career-highs on Friday.
Sophomore setter Hagen Smith, who has taken command of the starting position in recent weeks, shattered his previous high of 51 assists with 64.
“It’s really tough playing a team that will get all your bounces, all your really good hits and put them back on your side,” Smith said. “You just have to keep executing. We knew they were going to scrap the whole way and they kept putting balls over and that’s what was getting us.”
Freshman outside hitter J.T. Hatch and freshman opposite Christian Hessenauer each set new career highs in kills with 23 and 20 respectively, and are the first players to reach the 20-kill mark for UCLA this year. While the match did go all five sets, both freshmen broke their previous records midway through the fourth.
“I felt like we kept pretty good composure throughout the whole match, but we probably should have beat them in the first couple (sets) to not even make it a fifth set,” Hessenauer said, echoing the common takeaway of the night. “We still have a lot of learning to do.”
UCLA will see how quickly it can make adjustments now that the second half of conference play is underway. Other than back-to-back matches against No. 4 Brigham Young University in January, Friday was the first time the Bruins played a conference opponent for the second time.
The team will attempt to avenge another MPSF loss when it travels to UC Santa Barbara this Friday. The Gauchos swept the Bruins in Westwood but remain only a game ahead in the conference standings.