A bit of the old guard, a bit of new blood.
Last year’s relatively young UCLA men’s volleyball
team has given way to a mature squad of seniors and juniors.
However, UCLA will still live and die by its inexperience ““
starting freshman outside hitter Saul Zemaitaitis, who replaces the
graduated Matt Komer, and sophomore opposite Allan Vince ““ in
this weekend’s UC Santa Barbara/Elephant Bar Collegiate
Invitational.
In fact, one more underclassman would be contributing in the No.
1 Bruins’ first-round match against No. 8 USC Friday night if
not for redshirt junior Marcin Jagoda’s sprained ankle, which
will keep him out of the tournament. Vince will start in his
place.
“We are seeded No. 1 because I have not phoned in who is
not playing for us, otherwise I don’t think we’d be No.
1,” UCLA head coach Al Scates said, laughing.
The season-opening USC match will be the first start for both
Zemaitaitis and Vince, and would have been Jagoda’s.
“Marcin got the opportunity to start in the preseason and
did a great job,” sophomore outside hitter Jonathan Acosta
said.
“After break he was doing very well, but unfortunately he
twisted his ankle. The only upside is that we also have Allan
Vince, and I think he is a really great player.”
As far as a USC scouting report is concerned, the Bruins are in
the dark. According to Scates, the Trojans have a new
“outstanding Brazilian opposite” who did not play for
the Trojans in the preseason. The Bruins do not even know this
mysterious Brazilian’s name.
“We don’t care if it’s USC, we just want to
start out and play tough,” Acosta said. “It
doesn’t matter if USC comes with a Brazilian or without
one,” Acosta said.
Each team in the eight-team tournament plays three matches, with
a winner’s bracket and a loser’s bracket. The
championship match will take place Saturday night at 7 p.m. with
second round matches played Saturday morning. With this setup,
fatigue will surely be a factor.
“I don’t want to play some of our players in all
three matches,” Scates said. “I may rest a couple of
players in the second match, but if we win that we have a final
Saturday night.”
Despite the fact that the Bruins will be without Jagoda, junior
outside hitter Jesse Debban (injured knee), and senior middle
blocker Scott Morrow (who returns from surgery rehab in February),
the team is confident and excited for the start of the season.
“We’ve been working really hard this preseason and
we’ve been working hard in practice these last three days,
and I think we have a really good team,” Acosta said.
“If we play how we practice we should be doing very
well.”