The UCLA men’s volleyball team arrived in Long Beach
Friday with a five-match winning streak and left with a lot of work
to do.
No. 8 Long Beach State beat No. 7 UCLA 3-1 (31-33, 31-29, 24-30,
24-30) on the strength of its passing game, among other things.
“Well what happened was that we didn’t get them in
passing trouble at all, and they passed the ball so well that we
weren’t able to form a two man block against them and we
couldn’t slow their hitters downs,” UCLA head coach Al
Scates said.
As quicker offenses are being utilized around the league, the
No. 7 Bruins (11-8, 7-7 MPSF) are finding that they must adapt
their style of play.
“The game is evolving to a faster style of play,”
junior middle blocker Chris Peña said. “We have to make
our offense a lot faster; we played pretty sloppily.”
The 49ers (11-7, 7-6) were led by senior Scott Touzinsky, who
had 25 kills and hit .488.
“They passed better than we could serve, they beat our
block,” Scates said. “They set a fast ball to the
outside and we could not keep up with their quick set.”
Long Beach outblocked the Bruins 15.0-10.5 and outhit them
.457-.328. UCLA was led by sophomore outside hitter Jonathan Acosta
and sophomore opposite Allan Vince, who made 16 kills each.
After watching film of the Long Beach loss, the Bruins altered
their defensive schemes, and rallied to sweep UC San Diego 3-0
(37-35, 30-22, 30-26) Saturday The win was UCLA’s 36th
straight victory over the unranked Tritons (3-14, 0-13).
“We knew they were going to be good, even though they
haven’t won a match in league,” Scates said. “The
key was the first game ““ after that we scored very
well.”
Junior outside hitter J.T. Wenger had 17 kills and Peña
made 13 kills while hitting .524 to lead UCLA.
The Bruins played both road matches without freshman opposite
Matt McKinney who strained his knee in practice last week, and did
not play for precautionary reasons.
Scates said McKinney, the team’s best outside blocker, was
missed.
“The whole season has been about peaks and valleys,”
Peña said. “We reverted to a few bad things against Long
Beach, but I see us going to another peak.”