Monday, April 27, 1998
Waves upset Bruins, take automatic bid
VOLLEYBALL: UCLA blames poor serving for loss to Pepperdine
By Vytas Mazeika
Daily Bruin Staff
The UCLA men’s volleyball team lost their fourth, and what they
hope to be last, game of the season on Saturday.
With the NCAA Final Four less than a week away, the No. 1 Bruins
(26-4) lost to No. 2 Pepperdine (22-4) in the Mountain Pacific
Sports Federation title game at Pauley Pavilion in four games,
15-12, 11-15, 15-4, 15-12. The Waves received the automatic bid to
the 1998 men’s volleyball Final Four, which will be held in Hawaii.
UCLA must wait to find out if the NCAA will award them with the
at-large selection.
"It feels great," Pepperdine outside hitter George Roumain, the
MPSF player of the year, said. "We’ve trained all year for this and
we’re just kind of glad that we came through and played well. We
just tried to stay steady, not think about the score and play good
volleyball."
Roumain terrorized the Bruins with 42 kills while hitting a .397
clip. No other player, on either team, recorded more than 20 kills.
UCLA’s Ben Moselle, with 17 kills, had the second most..
The story of the game wasn’t Roumain by himself. Pepperdine
out-blocked UCLA 15 to 14, Pepperdine out-dug UCLA 68 to 46 and
Pepperdine out-hit UCLA .289 to .248. The dominance in these
statistics, though, is not the reason the Waves are now guaranteed
a spot in the Final Four.
The real reason is UCLA’s poor serving performance. Bruin senior
middle blocker Tom Stillwell believes Roumain’s stellar performance
can be attributed to the serving woes of the Bruins.
"We served really bad," Stillwell said. "We had one ace and 27
errors. Pretty much you’re not going to win a match when you do
that. On those missed serves we gave them a lot of easy sideouts
where we could’ve scored points in pressure situations."
Due to a lack of pressure Pepperdine had to deal with, the Waves
were very organized offensively all night long. Roumain was the
beneficiary of mistakes from UCLA’s Brandon Taliaferro (nine
service errors), Adam Naeve (seven) and Ben Moselle (seven).
The last time the Bruins served this badly was in a 15-12,
15-10, 15-8 loss to BYU on March 6. Coincidentally, the loss to BYU
was also the last time the Bruins lost a game at home.
"Against this team, if you look at the stats, you wonder how we
win," UCLA head coach Al Scates said. "We usually win on our jump
serves, but tonight we didn’t hit enough of them in. When we serve
the tough serves in, then our block and our defense works real
well. But we just made too many service errors tonight."
Even with the loss, UCLA could still be the top seed in the
Final Four.
The Bruins beat Pepperdine twice (in five games on January 29 at
Pepperdine and in four games April 10 at Pauley Pavilion) and were
unanimously chosen as the No. 1 team by the coaches.
A loss in Saturday’s MPSF final only negates them the automatic
bid – not necessarily the top seed.
The No. 1 seed would be even more special this year, considering
the fact that No. 11 Princeton (16-8) came out of the East – a
region expected to have been dominated by previously ranked No. 2
Ohio State. The Buckeyes (25-2) had only one loss heading into the
quarterfinals of the Eastern playoffs, but they were shocked by
Illinois-Chicago.
The other team in the Final Four is No. 6 Lewis (25-8).
Princeton is considered a much weaker team than the other three
headed to Hawaii, therefore making it more appealing for both UCLA
and Pepperdine to be the top seed.
But no matter who the No. 1 seed is, the likelihood that
Pepperdine and UCLA will meet for a fourth time this season in the
NCAA championship game is rather high – just don’t tell that to
Pepperdine head coach Marv Dunphy.
"You know what, I’m concerned about tomorrow," Dunphy said.
"There’s a lot of water to cross before we get (to Hawaii). Big
ocean to cross and there’s a semifinal game for both teams."
AARON TOUT/Daily Bruin
Brandon Taliaferro sets Tom Stillwell up for the spike against
Rick Tune of Pepperdine in the MPSF finals Saturday. UCLA lost in
four sets.