The UCLA men’s volleyball team has its second meeting in three weeks with Cal State Northridge (2-4, 1-2 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) tonight.
The Bruins (7-1, 2-0) opened their season with a 3-1 triumph over the Matadors in the UCSB/asics Invitational.
“They’re very scrappy, they’re not very big, but they dig a lot of balls, and they’re very relentless,” senior setter Kyle Caldwell said. “They have a good serving team, they play hard, and they’re not going to just let you beat them.”
In their last meeting, the Bruins out-hit the Matadors .397 to .188. However, they struggled to slow the Matadors’ leading hitter, Julius Hoefner. The 6-foot-9-inch freshman opposite punished UCLA for 15 kills.
“We’ve been working on our left-side blocking a lot this week because (Hoefner) did torch us up last time. He had 15 kills in four games, which is a lot,” Caldwell said.
Hoefner’s success in the last match was due in part to the absence of UCLA senior opposite Nick Vogel.
“We’ve added another blocker since then in Nick Vogel, so our block will be stronger than it was before,” coach Al Scates said.
But the biggest challenge for the Bruins will be handling the Matadors’ serving.
“What’s tough about Northridge is their serving. They spend a lot of time on serving, and they’re usually serving better than everyone else in January, which is because their arms are still fresh,” Scates said.
“They spend at least an hour a day serving hard jump serves in practice so it’s always challenging to pass their balls.”
However, the Bruins also boast a potent serving game.
“Our serving was great this weekend. Pacific couldn’t pass the ball at all,” Scates said.
“We were serving 80-mile-an-hour serves, and we were scoring well when they shanked a pass, so I was happy with our serving.”
Redshirt senior middle hitter Weston Dunlap rebounded from two less-than-stellar outings against No. 13 Hawaii and No. 4 Stanford with a dominant performance in the last match against then-No. 15 Pacific.
“Their middles are all worried about all our positions, our outsides and our opposites, so they’re not necessarily committing on us like other teams have been. Just be quick in the middle and you can get around them,” Dunlap said on how he plans attack the Matador defense.
Caldwell had a career game the last time he faced the Cal State Northridge. He had season-highs of 49 assists and a 1.000 hitting percentage to go with six kills, five digs and two service aces.
His puppeteer act with the Bruin offense this season has led UCLA to an outstanding .391 season hitting average.
“We’ve been playing very good volleyball as of late. When everyone’s playing well, it’s kind of hard to keep everyone honest on the other side of the ball,” Caldwell said.
“They’ve had a hard time reading what we’ve been doing, so if we can keep our passing and blocking up, it’ll be pretty hard to stop our team right now.”