Friday, March 13, 1998
It won’t be the same this time around
VOLLEYBALL: Stanford’s talented seniors left after last year’s
championship
By Grace Wen
Daily Bruin Staff
To call it a rematch of enormous significance would be an
overstatement.
When the UCLA men’s volleyball team travels north to take on the
Stanford Cardinal tonight, it will be a rematch of last year’s
national championship.
However, it probably won’t look a lot like last year’s
match.
In the championship match, Stanford took a 2-0 lead before UCLA
fought back to tie the match at two games a piece. In the final
rally-scoring game, the Cardinal barely pulled out a 15-13 win.
But this year’s Stanford squad is missing All-Americans Mike
Lambert and Stewart Chong. The seventh-ranked Cardinal (10-4) has
lost to Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount, USC and Penn State, all of
which are schools that UCLA has beaten.
"They’re an up and down team," UCLA head coach Al Scates said.
"They can be like BYU. They can come out and play a great match
like BYU did Friday. If they’re not on, then we should, frankly,
handle them very easily.
"But they’re up and down, they have peaks and valleys and if
they’re on, they’re very tough to beat. We don’t really know which
Stanford team is going to show up."
Although the Bruins (17-1, 11-1, Mountain Pacific Sports
Federation) don’t know which Stanford team will show up on the
court, UCLA can be sure of its own offense.
Sophomore Adam Naeve continues to be the team kill leader,
averaging 5.53 kills per game and hitting .446. Tom Stillwell, his
counterpart in the middle, is hitting .430 with 3.43 kills per
game.
Overall, UCLA is outhitting opponents .356 to .226, while
outserving them 2.2 to .70.
In addition, the Bruins have added motivation for the match, as
UCLA will be looking to avenge last year’s loss.
"I’m sure we’ll be ready to go," Scates said. "There’s no
question about that. We’ll be up for Stanford. We’ll be focused,
we’ll be ready."
After Friday night’s match, the Bruins will visit Stockton to
take on the University of the Pacific. UOP is 6-10 and 3-9 in the
conference. The Tigers lost All-American opposite Greg Wakeham and
have not fared well thus far into the season.MARY CIECEK
Brandon Taliaferro sets the ball for Adam Naeve.