MALIBU “”mdash; Not by chance or choice, the Bruins have become a
masochistic bunch.
Saturday’s Firestone Fieldhouse flogging at the hands of
Pepperdine wasn’t enough to satisfy them. No, the UCLA
men’s volleyball team (14-13, 9-11 MPSF) actually wants to
take up its season-long frustration with the Waves (21-3, 18-2) one
last time in the first round of the conference tournament.
The Bruins got a taste of what they can expect if they actually
do make the return trip. Backed by 1,874 fans in attendance armed
with ThunderStix, the Waves won in lightning-quick fashion, needing
only 80 minutes to dispatch their challenger 30-27, 30-19,
30-23.
“We played one good game, and that’s about the best
we can play right now,” UCLA head coach Al Scates said.
“But I’d love to come back here.”
UCLA may not get that chance. It currently sits tied in eighth
place in the MPSF with Long Beach State with two matches to play.
Since Long Beach defeated UCLA twice in the regular season, the
49ers hold the tiebreaker.
The Bruins essentially need to win their final home matches
against Stanford and Pacific to have a chance of overtaking Long
Beach, which has upcoming matches against Cal State Northridge and
bottom-dwelling UC Santa Barbara.
UCLA also has an outside shot of catching Stanford or UC Irvine.
All this just for the right to play another match against
all-powerful Pepperdine, which can clinch the No. 1 seed in the
MPSF tournament by splitting an upcoming two-match series with
BYU.
“Our chance tonight was to out-heart them, but they showed
why they’re the best team in the country,” middle
blocker Chris Peña said.
The entire UCLA team only had three blocks. Pepperdine middle
blocker Brad Keenan (12 kills, .688) alone had four of his
team’s 14.
The impenetrable wall at the net created by Keenan and fellow
All-American Sean Rooney caused three Bruin attackers ““
Jonathan Acosta, Marcin Jagoda and Allan Vince ““ to combine
for 18 hitting errors against only 13 kills.
Acosta was benched for his play, and Vince had come into the
match for Jagoda, who hit a horrific -.308 coming off a breakout
performance against USC.
UCLA, led by Peña’s match-high 13 kills, only hit
.155 overall, while Pepperdine maintained a .341 clip.
“They’re a good team, and we played badly,”
libero Adam Shrader said.
Scates had three new starters ““ Jagoda, Kris Kraushaar and
David Russell ““ in the lineup on the opening serve. By the
final whistle, Scates had emptied his bench.
He might as well have. It could very well be the last time the
Bruins, in danger of missing the postseason for the first time in
school history, come here anyway.
Whether they like it or not.