MINDY ROSS/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Stacey
Lee prepares to pass the ball, as Ashley
Bowles looks on, in the second round of the NCAA
tournament in December.
By Christina Teller
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
There was no easing into the season. The UCLA women’s
volleyball team was put on top from the beginning, and fought to
live up to expectations throughout the 2000 campaign.
Receiving 23 out of 60 possible votes for the first place
national ranking, the Bruins became the target of every other team
in the nation.
“We really saw it as an honor,” said UCLA head coach
Andy Banachowski. “I think that everybody has worked very
hard in the off-season, so I think we felt pretty gratified that
the hard work was being recognized by coaches and writers across
the country.”
After facing a hefty preseason schedule against the likes of the
future undefeated national champion Nebraska and formidable Hawaii
teams, the Bruins jumped into the regular season on all
cylinders.
With five returning starters, including now first-team
All-American junior outside hitter Kristee Porter, the team had all
the necessary weapons to make a run at the national title. But they
faced an obstacle even before they played their first match: middle
blocker Angela Eckmier would be out for the season with a torn ACL,
leaving freshman Ella Harley to fill the position with virtually no
middle-blocker experience.
“I think we’re capable of being a championship
team,” Banachowski said in September.
“We’ve played a pretty tough schedule. We’re
not as mature yet as we need to be and as I thought we would be as
a team at this point,” he said. “We lost Angela
Eckmier. I think that hurt a little bit of our
continuity.”
The Bruins entered conference play with a No. 7 ranking and a
deceptive 5-3 preseason record, that included tough losses to both
Nebraska and Hawaii and convincing wins over Penn State and
Michigan State. The team knew they could play with the best and
would get another shot at the top teams in the tournament.
With opening sweeps against the Washington schools and Stanford,
a team that had given UCLA tough matches in the past, the Bruins
appeared to be on the right track. But a surprising loss to
unranked Oregon State, a team who had never before defeated UCLA,
sent the Bruins down to No. 10 in the polls.
“We really only showed up for two games in the entire
match,” Porter said after the game. “So far this
season, we have gotten ourselves up for matches against ranked
teams and then have let down and not played with the same type of
energy against teams we know we should beat.”
“Maybe this will give us a wake-up call,”
Banachowski added. “That we need to play with more intensity
and desire in every game.”
The loss highlighted a problem that would surface repeatedly
throughout the rest of the season: inconsistency.
Rebounding from the loss to the Beavers and a tough 3-2 loss to
USC at North Gym, the Bruins went on an eight-match winning
streak.
The upswing started with the then-No. 13 Bruins’ trip to
the desert, which featured back-to-back five-game wins over Arizona
State and then-No. 5 Arizona. The win over Arizona put them in
second place in the conference, just behind the Wildcats and
Trojans, who sported 8-1 Pac-10 records to UCLA’s 7-2.
The streak continued with three-game sweeps of Stanford, whose
roster sported 2000 olympian Logan Tom, and then-No. 3 USC.
But inconsistency reared its head again as UCLA, who was in
position to clinch the Pac-10 title with a win over Arizona, lost
control after game one in a 3-1 match against the Wildcats.
With the postseason in sight, the Bruins wrapped up conference
play with a 1-1 trip to Washington, defeating the Huskies but
losing to the Cougars. They cited lack of focus and consistency
from start to finish as the main factors in the loss.
But as in all college sports, it is tournament play that really
counts.
The No. 11 Bruins had a bonus Thanksgiving tournament to work
out the kinks before they set out on the championship hunt.
“This is a really important weekend for us. It’s the
last matches that we have before we start focusing on the
tournament play,” Bachman said before the tournament.
“We’re going to go out there and play tough and build
up our confidence and play like we know we can play.”
With the Baylor Thanksgiving Classic title under their belts
““ which included sweeps of Connecticut and Baylor ““ as
well as more on-the-road experience, UCLA was ready to face
whatever opponent the NCAA put them up against.
Seeded in the Midwest bracket, with neither No. 1 Nebraska nor
then-No. 3 Hawaii, the third-seeded Bruins breathed a huge sigh of
relief and began preparing to face Morgan State.
A 3-0 win moved UCLA on to Michigan State, which would prove to
be a tough second-round win. In a grueling five-game match that
lasted two hours and 47 minutes, the Bruins proved triumphant, but
the match could have gone either way.
With Porter and Bachman posting 35 and 16 kills respectively on
the board, the Bruins proved they could hang with and defeat a
powerful opponent from the Big 12, one of the nation’s top
volleyball conferences.
After their Sweet Sixteen victory over University of the
Pacific, the Bruins faced another Big 12 opponent in the Wisconsin
Badgers in Madison.
Again, it was a match that could have gone either way. Game five
came down to the final three points, as the score that had remained
within one or two for the duration was knotted at 12. Two kills and
a block later, the Badgers advanced to the Final Four and the
Bruins went home to take their finals.
“It was definitely a disappointment because we were so
close and worked so hard and definitely had chances to win,”
Bachman said after the game. “When we went back to locker
room, I told everyone that I could not be any prouder of how
everyone played tonight. We played our hearts out and gave it our
all.”
And so the season ended for UCLA. Recognized early for their
arsenal of talent, inconsistency occasionally caused the Bruins to
lose their footing.
Still, there was never a doubt that this team was among the best
in the nation. Porter ended the season at the top of the Pac-10 in
kills per game (5.98), and senior middle blocker Elisabeth Bachman
was second in the league in hitting percentage (.397), and blocks
per game (1.45). Directing the offense for her third year was
junior setter Erika Selsor, who had 13 matches with more than 70
assists, and led the league with 14.77 per game. Rounding out the
team were the consistent junior opposite hitter Ashley Bowles and
sophomore outside hitter Lauren Fendrick, who topped the conference
in aces.
In the end, they fared well, posting a record of 25-8 and making
their second consecutive appearance in the Elite Eight. With only
two players graduating, albeit key forces on offense (Bachman) and
defense (Michele Quon), UCLA will begin their hunt for the title
again in 2001.