I don’t like doing posts like this. You’ll notice I never simply give rote match results, except in the case of beach volleyball tournaments where I cover one court’s worth of matches while as many as five other courts may be playing simultaneously. My philosophy is that rote match results are something you can get anywhere. I want to offer something you can’t get anywhere, that being detailed (to a fault, if anything) rundowns of what matches I choose to cover and personal analysis.
I haven’t been able to do that this week. My sleeping cycle has been terribly fouled up this week. I work at a department store, and this week was inventory, which meant overnight shifts!! I quite literally lost track of what day of the week it was on at least two occasions. I wanted to watch last night’s matches, in particular the big BYU/UC Irvine clash, but I wound up falling asleep quite unintentionally at around 4 PM, only to wake again a little after midnight. So I missed out on them entirely. It will probably happen again tonight.
So, perhaps this post is as much for my benefit as it is for yours.
We have to start with UC Irvine. They entered this week still carrying the #1 national ranking, though their margin over second place was slimmed considerably from their previous unanimous hold on it. They’ll drop from the top spot in next week’s poll. For as brilliant as the Anteaters were at the Santa Barbara Invitational at the beginning of the year, easily sweeping aside California Baptist and Long Beach State before dispatching UCLA in — of course — a full five sets, that’s how dismal they’ve been since that tourney.
Their week this week started with a five-set loss to California Baptist where they at first led 2-0. The story of the third set is easy to discern from the boxscore — they Anteaters went 10/6/29 as a team in that set, for just .138. Ten kills will seldom win a set, just as the Lancers dropped the first set with an even uglier 10/8/26 for .077. UCI improved to 14/4/25 for .400 in the fourth, not bad at all, but when you give up 17/2/25 (.600!!!) you’re seldom going to be putting a notch in your belt. Both teams actually dropped below .200 in the decider, which as mentioned went to Baptist. The final linescore was (22-25, 19-25, 25-16, 25-22, 15-13) for Cal Bapist. The Lancers out-dug the Anteaters by about a dig per set, and hit 77 points higher for the match. UCI’s big stars Kevin Tillie and Jeremy Dejno both had good matches, but Connor Hughes’ 11/8/32 night for just .094 was perhaps a microcosm of how it went for them.
So they next traveled to Provo no doubt still reeling. The numbers for the BYU match show a distinct lack of execution, starting in the very first set. Siding out at just 58% and just barely hitting positive at 10/9/32, the tone was set for a difficult night for UCI. It got better in the second, but not much, as BYU were still stronger. Irvine did take the third set, due perhaps to a dip in efficiency on the Cougar side of the net, but BYU still won the match fairly easily by a count of (25-20, 25-23, 19-25, 25-22). Tillie was…ehh, okay…at 19/8/39 for .282. He’s capable of much better than that. BYU again involved their middles in the offense, which is a smart albeit obvious decision. Russ Lavaja and Devin Young took a combined 32 swings for the Cougars — definitely a good number to keep a defense off-balance. behind Taylor Sander, Lavaja was actually joint-second highest scorer with Josue Rivera (and not Ben Patch) in this match.
UCI are now just 1-3 in MPSF play. BYU also play UC San Diego later tonight.
So BYU will probably be the new #1 team next week, since the last undefeated team Stanford also lost this week, to a surging USC squad. It was a three-set sweep, though the Cardinal took two of the three sets to extra points in USC’s (27-25, 25-18, 29-27) triumph. Without using even a single bench player (just six starters and one libero), USC cruised to a 49/14/87 team hitting line, for .402. Of the five hitters (setter Micah Christenson was 2/0/3, but that hardly counts), three of them were better than .400 themselves (and the fourth was .385). Stanford continued to serve the ball well, with 5 aces in the match to just 1 for USC, but the Cardinal could manage just 3 total team blocks in the match.
USC, whose only non-conference match both to date and at all on their 2013 schedule was a non-counting contest against a Canadian school, are now 2-1 overall and in league. Stanford are 4-1 overall and 1-1 in league. Both schools are back in action on Sunday.
Pepperdine have likewise not played any official non-conference matches. They too have a Friday/Sunday this week, having beaten University of the Pacific pretty convincingly last night, all three sets with the same 25-19 score. They held the Tigers to just 28/20/76 for .105, an impressively low hitting figure for men’s volleyball. Kyle Gerrans and Maurice Torres combined to go 22/1/30 for the Waves, which good god you had better win when that happens. Curiously, despite all three sets having the same score, the Tigers’ team hitting performance sank like a rock as the match went on — .321 in the first, .087 in the second, .120 negative in the third. Pepperdine’s performances, a bonkers .667, a still-pretty-good .292, and a what-do-you-really-even-have-to-do-when-they-hit-negative .238 show why perhaps. Pepperdine’s match on Sunday is with Stanford — and that’s a pretty important one.
UCLA have finally learned how not to play five-set matches. Both of their matches this week went four. Despite slightly outhitting, outblocking, and indeed, outscoring, the Long Beach State 49ers Tuesday night, the Bruins lost by a (25-23, 25-22, 16-25, 25-17) count. Set one was competitive, but sets two and four really were not, as the Bruins never led in either one of them. The Bruins were able to right the ship three nights later against Santa Barbara, defeating the Gauchos by a score of (21-25, 25-17, 25-17, 25-19). This was, quite obviously, a much better performance from the Bruins, hitting .465 as a club with only 9 attack errors on the night and held UCSB to .277 on 14 errors. They quadrupled the Gauchos in blocking and but for one consistent threat, that being Matt Marsh’s 16/3/33, they kept UCSB pretty quiet on the scoreboard.
In their only match of the week, Penn State won a trench battle with Lewis, as both sides hit below .200 for the match and Lewis, in defeat and in only 4 sets, posted 17.5 total team blocks (to Penn State’s perfectly reasonable 9.0 total). The loss drops Lewis to just 1-5 on the season. They’ll make some hay come MIVA time, but it’s possible they won’t have a number next to their name when that happens. Aaron Russell had probably his worst match, hitting negative at 9/12/32. Brother Peter, Nick Turko, Tom Comfort, and Matt Seifert picked up the slack, all hitting .250 or better on double-digit swings. Comfort led the way at 18/6/41 for .293. Geoff Powell, Eric Fitterer, and Jay Petty all had double-digit kills, and Fitterer a match-high 11 blocks, but they also combined for 22 of Lewis’ 25 attack errors, the majority of which were unforced. The final was (25-22, 25-23, 20-25, 25-18) for Penn State, and Lewis are taking on just a bit of water at this point.
And while Cal Baptist beat UC Irvine, they also lost to UC San Diego in five sets, who earlier in the season lost to Pepperdine, beat USC, and lost to Long Beach State. Do not try to apply the transitive property to college volleyball. You’ll lose your mind. And lastly Hawaii, after their emotional win over UCLA to conclude their home invitational a week ago, lost another five-set heartbreaker, this time to Long Beach State. The final line was (25-17, 25-23, 22-25, 27-29, 16-14) for the 49ers. It just furthers my feeling that Hawaii just aren’t quite good enough to really hang around in the MPSF. They’ll have their moments. They’ll probably get another really nice feel-good win. Or two. Or maybe even three. But that’s probably about all their season will amount to. The Warriors face the 49ers again tonight.
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