In an exhausting five-game marathon, the No. 8 UCLA
women’s volleyball team defeated No. 13 Washington 24-22 in
the final and deciding game at Seattle on Friday.
The match was one of the longest in UCLA history since the
introduction of rally scoring, and it left most of the players
physically drained. Although battered, the Bruins at least had the
comfort of knowing that they came away with an extremely
hard-fought win.
“I’m exhausted, but so glad to have won here in
Washington,” junior Heather Cullen said. “I don’t
want to do that again; I’m way too tired.”
After a grueling five-game match against unranked Washington
State just the night before, the last thing UCLA wanted to do was
fall behind early. The Bruins (12-2, 4-1 Pac-10) came out
aggressively and won the first two games 30-27 and 30-26. But the
Washington coaching staff made a critical adjustment going into the
third game that threw UCLA off-kilter.
“They made some personnel changes, their block got bigger,
and they started to dig better,” coach Andy Banachowski
said.
While the Bruins hit .288 in the second game, that percentage
dropped to .167 in the third and then plummeted to .102 in the
fourth, allowing the Huskies (11-3, 2-3 Pac 10) to come back from
an 0-2 deficit to take the next two games 30-26 and 30-21. A
combination of fatigue from the previous match and predictability
on offense led to a stagnant UCLA offense.
“They put in a new front row in the third, and we kept
hitting the same shots,” Cullen said. “We needed to be
a little more deceptive with our attack.”
Going into the final match, UCLA knew it had to stop Husky
outside hitter Sanja Tomasevic, Washington’s best offensive
player. While the senior did put away an astonishing 32 kills,
Tomasevic made 11 errors and needed 96 hitting attempts.
Still, it seemed as though the Bruins were doomed to lose when
the Huskies took a lead of 9-4 heading into the deciding game. But
as it has done in virtually every clutch situation, the team began
to rally back.
“Everyone individually picked up their game. Everyone
realized what they had to do and everyone stepped up, the whole
team played better,” junior Chrissie Zartman said.
Junior Brittany Ringel, after playing in only one game at
Washington State, played a bigger role in Washington by playing in
three games. Still recovering from her ankle sprain, Ringel was
nevertheless playing in the crucial moments of the game, and put
away a kill that tied the fifth game at 12. She had five kills
total in the fifth game, leading the comeback effort for UCLA. The
Bruins had match point four times before a hitting error by
Washington finally gave the match to UCLA.
“In the third and fourth games, we wanted them to roll
over, and that didn’t happen,” Cullen said. “We
were down, but we came back. This is a hard gym to play
at.”
After setting a career high in kills at 21 less than 24 hours
earlier, junior Brynn Murphy did herself one better, putting away
22 kills. Cullen had 18 kills, and Ringel had 10 total kills with
only 2 errors.
Struggling with five game matches back-to-back may have worn the
Bruins out, but the results are the same nevertheless.
“This ends up being a great road trip, even though we had
to struggle,” Banachowski said.