Monday, January 26, 1998
Deep bench helps Bruins come home with sweep
VOLLEYBALL Players step up when needed to lead UCLA to
victory
By Grace Wen
Daily Bruin Staff
Before Friday night’s match against UCSB, UCLA head coach Al
Scates said that he sometimes felt lucky to leave Santa Barbara
with a win.
However, on Friday night the UCLA men’s volleyball team
demonstrated that luck has nothing to do with it.
Before a crowd of approximately 1,500 raucous fans, UCLA won in
convincing fashion as it swept the Gauchos 15-13, 15-9, 15-10.
"They had a nice little crowd there," Scates said. "They were
just loud the whole time. The home team was really excited. We were
playing real hard too. We didn’t have everybody playing well but
you rarely have all six people playing well."
The Bruins (6-0, 2-0 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) didn’t
need everybody to play well. It seemed as if they only needed one
player at a time.
Middle blocker Adam Naeve was the hot hitter for the night.
Naeve punished the Gauchos (0-2, 0-2) with 30 kills in 46 attempts
for a blistering .522 clip. The 6-foot-10-inch sophomore spiked 10
kills in game one and added 3 aces and 2 blocks. During game two,
Naeve put away 14 of 17 sets, recording over half the team’s total
kills (24) in the second game.
Naeve’s hitting cooled somewhat in game three after he was
switched to the opposite position. (Evan Thatcher and Andor Gyulai
both struggled at the spot forcing Scates to insert Danny Farmer
into the middle while moving Naeve to opposite.) But, it didn’t
affect the Bruins, who had other players to pick up the slack.
Farmer tallied four kills and two blocks while Tom Stillwell and
Ben Moselle each added four kills.
Though the Gauchos outhit the Bruins .356 to .350 in game one,
UCSB couldn’t counter the Bruin attack in games two and three, when
UCLA outhit UCSB .326 to .271 and .362 to .136.
"When our block is formed, they’re trying shots they don’t have
and they’re hitting the ball out," Scates said. "That’s what Santa
Barbara did and it was really evident in the third game. We’re
taking the court and they’re choosing not to hit the court. The
loss of Donny Harris hurt them. They couldn’t replace him. He was a
tremendous hitter. Even though they have four starters coming back,
the Santa Barbara team is not as strong as it was last year."
UCLA, on the other hand, may have a stronger team than it has in
recent years. The Bruin bench is deep at every position and it
demonstrated this during the match. Despite having two starters who
were having an off night, the Bruins still triumphed over the
Gauchos.
And luck had nothing to do with it.