"A few words" is my label for match reports with less specificity, but I know they often end up being "a few (hundred) words." This one I think will end up living up to the promise of brevity.
I didn't really want to watch this match. It's nice that it's Senior Night in Provo, but that's for the people who are emotionally invested in a program (and its players), not an impartial fan. So beyond that, all this match had to offer was a decided mismatch between probably the best team in the country and one of the worst, with very little by way of standings significance present. I wanted to watch UCLA at UC Irvine, and I figured it would be webcast. I even tweeted as much, with the URL, @ UCLA Athletics and UCLA M. Volleyball. But it never came on. I feel bad about misleading people, because why the heck would it not be on? The stream of UCI/BYU a few weeks back was perfectly acceptable, and there was nothing to it.
But, this post is mainly about USC and BYU. It was about as close as you'd expect, with a (25-14, 25-15, 26-24) final. The Men of Troy kept it close in set 1 at first, trailing just 12-10, before a 9-serve run, featuring three aces, for Josue Rivera broke it open. The Cougars jumped out on top in the 2nd, scoring the first 4 points, and USC never led. The Cougars took control earlier in set 2, breaking it open at 13-6. The Trojans decided to show up in the 3rd, with Joey Booth providing them with a bit of a spark. They led 10-7 at BYU's first timeout, 21-18 at their second, and as late again as 22-21, but the Cougars did indeed finish off the sweep. It looked in the tiniest bit of doubt for a moment when Taylor Sander's only hitting error of the night staved off match point at 24-23, but the Cougars took the next two to put it away.
Sander finished 17/1/21 for .762, which is just insane. No other word for it. Ben Patch's 10/4/20, .300, looked comparatively paltry (though maybe it is, for him). Interestingly, Russ Lavaja exactly halved Patch's attack stats, with his .300 being 5/2/10. Michael Hatch ended his night at a thousand with 5 kills on 5 swings. Nobody on the USC side reached double figures. Tanner Jansen led them with 9 kills, while Alex Slaught's efficiency was best at 8/2/13, for .462. Most nights that'd be pretty good for an outside, but not when your counterpart hits .762, on 8 more swings than you had.
And so both teams march on in the direction they were pretty clearly heading anyway. I'm sure you can just feel how excited I was about this match.
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