Thursday’s match against the visiting No. 13 Hawai’i Warriors had the makings of a quick and quiet victory for the No. 9 Bruins.
UCLA easily took the first two sets by a combined 11 points.
But after the Bruins dropped the third set and lost momentum late in the fourth set on a disputed call, the match turned into an emotional struggle.
In the end, the Bruins (11-13, 7-10 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) came together to take the fifth set and the match from the Warriors (6-16, 3-14), 30-27, 30-22, 24-30, 25-30, 15-13.
The win gives the Bruins a solid, one-match lead over ninth-place UC San Diego and moves them into a tie for seventh with Long Beach State.
With the loss, Hawai’i again failed on the road and was virtually eliminated from the playoff race.
But the real story of the night could not be found in any statistics ““ it was the emotional battle the teams faced.
“Going into that fourth game, we were up on them, I thought we were controlling the game,” senior outside hitter Sean O’Malley said. “There was a crucial call that was missed … and that let (Hawai’i) in.”
In the fourth set, the referees called a ball out-of-bounds off a UCLA attack, but the UCLA players believed the ball went out off a Hawai’i block. This led to a quick run for the Warriors.
In order to stifle this spike of momentum for the visitors, coach Al Scates made some unusual substitutions that slowed down the game and put a halt to Hawai’i’s run.
“We started making some interesting, off-the-cuff substitutions, and it got confusing,” O’Malley said.
Scates made a number of substitutions at the first outside hitter position. NCAA rules allow a maximum of two substitutions per position. After Scates made the third substitution at that position, Hawai’i coaches appealed to the referees for a penalty.
The disagreement not only led to confusion among UCLA players as to how their rotation went but also created a significant pause in play that may have helped UCLA refocus en route to the victory.
“I was thankful for the long break,” Scates said. “Long breaks are good when the other team has all the momentum.”
AROUND THE MPSF: The only other match in the conference Thursday night was between No. 1 UC Irvine and No. 6 Brigham Young.
The hosting Cougars upset the Anteaters and broke their seven-match winning streak in a shocking four-set battle. The match widens Pepperdine’s gap with UC Irvine and moves BYU ahead of Stanford into sole possession of fifth place in the conference.