The Bruins suffered a loss to the No. 1 team in the country, but the team continues to develop.
No. 7 UCLA men’s volleyball (5-2) was swept by No. 1 Long Beach State at home Saturday in a rematch of last season’s NCAA championship final. However, the Bruins have a chance to improve in matches to follow.
Senior outside hitter Dylan Missry said UCLA needs to continue working on maintaining the momentum it gains.
“Volleyball is a momentum game,” Missry said. “We just couldn’t side out on a couple guys serving and couldn’t get out of a couple rotations so I guess that’s a loss of momentum.”
UCLA has a number of matches scheduled against opponents of the same pedigree as Long Beach State, including No. 4 BYU and No. 6 Pepperdine. Coach John Speraw said the Bruins need to work on taking advantage of momentum in offense.
“We didn’t block very well,” Speraw said. “(The 49ers) are very efficient hitters, they have been for years. That’s a big challenge. When we have some opportunities to score some points and we don’t do it, that’s really tough against (Long Beach State).”
UCLA has not started MPSF conference play. However, UCLA has three matches away from home, including two in Illinois, before it begins conference play against No. 8 Stanford, followed by a match against the reigning MPSF champion BYU.
The Bruins posted an additional 19 service errors against the 49ers, taking their total to 146 so far this season. Speraw said before the game that serving is crucial to UCLA forcing opponents out of system, and said after the match that specific serves and servers need to improve.
“We should probably be more aggressive,” Speraw said. “The errors I’m concerned with are the float serve errors, that right now is really too high. There’s no way (sophomore middle blocker) Grant (Maleski) should have three errors in five total attempts. So if you look at all this, the only guy we need to improve on the jump serve side is (junior middle blocker) Daenan (Gyimah). I don’t think we’re that far off from being a really good service team.”
Senior setter Micah Ma’a said UCLA will continue to serve tough.
“We’re okay with errors, that’s our philosophy and we’re going to stick with it,” Ma’a said.
The Bruins have made full use of a large roster, playing 13 players so far this season as Speraw substitutes players in for specific scenarios.
Such scenarios include rotating in redshirt sophomore setter/outside hitter Sam Kobrine to boost hitting on the left and using redshirt sophomore libero Sam Jones to log more digs, he said.
Speraw said UCLA needs to continue to work on its confidence to improve its response against opponents.
“I really believe that we can be a really mentally tough team,” Speraw said. “We’re not playing with as much confidence as we need to have. Now, confidence is earned and right now we’re not as skilled as we need to be in some areas of the game and not as smooth as we need to be.”
The Bruins will travel to face UC San Diego on Friday.