Coach Al Scates is simply not pleased with his men’s volleyball team these days.
After drawing up a precisely coordinated plan during a late-game time-out Friday against Cal State Northridge, Scates had little to say to his Bruins after the game plan was not followed, resulting in a four-game loss.
“I (didn’t) even have a meeting with the team (Friday night); I didn’t want to have a meeting,” Scates said. “My temperament is not good.”
In its third loss of its current four-match road stretch and its fourth loss in six matches, the No. 6 Bruins fell in a close contest to the No. 4 Matadors at the Matadome this weekend 28-30, 31-29, 33-35, 28-30. UCLA now falls to 10-7 overall and 7-6 in Mountain Pacific Sports Federation play, and drops to fifth place in the conference standings behind Pepperdine.
In the waning moments of the game, Scates called a time-out in an attempt to recapture the set, but it was all for naught. Precisely drawn up and coordinated, the plan was to set up two blockers on the Matador left side. However, a missed assignment may have cost the Bruins the game, and Scates was not at all thrilled with the result.
“We had a few blown assignments with Jamie Diefenbach,” Scates said. “He was supposed to release and block the left side, but he just didn’t get out there.”
A phenomenal performance by outside hitter Garrett Muagututia, with a career-high 31 kills, was not enough to help the Bruins pull through in this dogfight of a match, because in spite of his firepower, there was something lacking from the other members of the team.
“Garrett was putting a lot of balls away for us in transition … but no one else lit it up,” Scates said.
Suffering from a calf strain in his gastrocnemius muscle, opposite Ryan Ratelle has been unable to perform up to his standard as he was earlier in the season. Scates has thus been bringing in players from off the bench and from behind the blue curtain in search of production.
“We have a revolving door at opposite,” Scates said. “We haven’t replaced (former opposite and Most Outstanding Player of the 2006 NCAA Championship) Steve Klosterman obviously. We’re trying to find an opposite who can hit and block.”
The list is almost without end. Dylan Bowermaster, Brett Perrine and Darwin Edwards have all come and gone. The team is hoping Ratelle will return to full health soon.
“He’s not 100 percent; maybe after the weekend he will be,” Scates said. “He’s been playing with it for a number of matches. It takes him a long time to warm up too.”
As the Bruins travel to Muncie, Ind., to face Ball State, they can only hope to end their road-trip woes in the conclusion of their six-match streak away from home.