The UCLA men’s volleyball team finally started strong.
The No. 4 Bruins (14-3, 10-3 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation), who have been plagued by slow starts in 2016, came out firing Wednesday night in a three-set victory against the No. 15 Cal Baptist Lancers (8-10, 3-10).
In a relatively unusual turn of events, UCLA got out to a quick start in each set – tallying leads of 10-3, 7-3 and 8-3.
“We knew we were coming out slow – we have been for the past couple games now,” said freshman libero Davis Gillet. “We just wanted to come out focused and change our season around. We’ve been lacking on the energy recently so we needed to bring it.”
Despite the fact that UCLA fell in a four-set loss to No. 3 Stanford on Saturday morning, coach John Speraw said he felt his team did a lot of things well in a good statistical match. The Bruins continued their strong play Wednesday.
Sophomore outside hitters JT Hatch and Jake Arnitz led the Bruins with nine kills apiece. As a team, UCLA hit .333 whereas Cal Baptist could only muster a minuscule .066 hitting percentage.
Senior outside hitter Rocky DeLyon was the sole Lancer with more than five kills. DeLyon posted eight kills and, as a team, the Lancers only tallied 23 assists, compared to the Bruins’ 35.
UCLA dominated at the service line, with nine aces to counter just one from Cal Baptist. That strong serving game helped the home team take its early leads – and hold them – in each of the three sets.
“Our service game was pretty good tonight,” Speraw said. “Early in the season I thought we won a lot of matches because of our serve and that hasn’t been the case during much of the middle part of our season. Oliver (Martin) came out and scored four or five right out of the gate and that really set the tone.”
The first set saw the Bruins cruise to an easy 25-18 victory, aided by the early 5-0 run. UCLA finished the opening period hitting .533.
The second set saw the Bruins’ hitting percentage plummet to .206, as the Lancers fought to keep pace. Both teams would go on sizable runs, but it was always the visitors who were running to catch up.
The Bruins returned to form in the final set, leading by a wide margin the whole way as UCLA completed their second straight shutout against their conference foes with a 25-13 victory.
“Sometimes you learn from your mistakes,” Hatch said regarding the team’s recent loss. “Unfortunately we had to learn the hard way, but tonight we got a good warm-up in and came out big in all three sets.”
