LIISA SPINK Senior outside hitter Mark
Williams gets a dig against Stanford on Saturday.
UCLA d. Stanford 27-30, 30-23, 30-22, 27-30,
20-18
By Amanda Fletcher
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
When the UCLA men’s volleyball team lost to Stanford on
April 13 for the second time this season, Head Coach Al Scates
said, “That’s a team I want to see in
playoffs.”
He and the rest of the Bruins got their wish when they were
pitted against Stanford in the first round of Mountain Pacific
Sports Federation playoffs Saturday night at Pauley Pavilion.
But this time there was a very different outcome.
In one of the most exciting matches of the year, UCLA defeated
Stanford 27-30, 30-23, 30-22, 27-30, 20-18, putting the Bruins one
step closer to the NCAA championship and getting that pesky monkey
off their backs.
“We got beat twice and there was no way in hell we were
going to lose a third time,” sophomore setter Rich Nelson
said. “We knew we were playing them and we were out for
blood.”
Having to play their nemesis in the first round of playoffs
seems like a horrible twist of fate. But that’s not how the
Bruins looked at it.
“It’s almost the opposite,” Cameron Mount
said. “The chance of us losing to a team three times is slim.
It gave us more of an incentive to prove we are the better
team.”
And that they did.
At the start of the match, the makings of a three-peat emerged
as Stanford took an early lead and never looked back.
But the Bruins stepped it up a notch in the next two games,
shifting the momentum to their side of the court.
Behind the dominating play of senior middle blocker Adam Naeve,
who connected with Nelson for 13 of his 19 match kills, the Bruins
took control of games two and three.
“We came out and were serving well, blocking well.
Everything was clicking in those games and we blew them
away,” Adam Shrader said. “Naeve was on fire with his
serve and that gave us the edge.”
The UCLA record holder for most aces in a match, Naeve is one of
the Bruin’s deadliest servers. But his performance
hadn’t been up to par in previous matches against
Stanford.
“At Stanford he swung easy and didn’t get a
rhythm,” Scates said.
This time the beat couldn’t be stopped as Naeve connected
for five of UCLA’s six aces.
Game four saw the tide turn once again as a lapse in Bruin
defense allowed Stanford to win the game. The Cardinal continued to
push the Bruins in the fifth and at one point in the final game,
the score was even at 15.
“UCLA had a lot of momentum at that point and we hung in
there, we fought our way back,” Stanford Head Coach Ruben
Nieves said.
In the final game, the teams went point for point, igniting a
wave of enthusiasm that spread through Pauley like wildfire. With
the match tied at 12, Scott Morrow came up with a big block to end
one of the longest rallies of the game and inspire a resounding
eight-clap from the UCLA crowd.
A controversial reach call on the Bruins put Stanford up 17-16,
but Mount responded with two kills to give the lead back to
UCLA.
Stanford came back and tied the game at 18, but a Mark Williams
kill once again put the Bruins up by one.
At game point, Stanford outside hitter Marcus Skacel, who had
been the Cardinal’s most consistent player all night, spiked
the ball wide, ending the match.
“The fifth game we battled. We had game points; it could
have gone either way,” Skacel said. “It just happened
to go their way this time. We got them last time, they got us
this time. They just had that one extra play.”
The real key to the Bruins’ victory was the fact that they
were able to correct the mistakes that plagued them in the
past.
“A lot of the reason we lost the last two matches was
unforced hitting errors, so we focused on that in practice,”
Mount said. “It’s a fine line. You can’t swing
tentatively.
“We had match points against us and didn’t make
hitting errors,” Williams added.
In fact, the Bruins averted certain death at three different
match points with critical kills.
Both Mount, who accounted for one of those, and Williams, who
saved two, led the Bruins with 26 kills each. Naeve followed with
19 on an incredible .607 clip.
But there was more to the win than an improved offense.
“What impressed me most about UCLA is their defense in the
last three or four points,” Nieves said. “They
made some championship plays right at the end, championship-level
defensive plays. That made the difference.”
Both Nelson and Shrader posted 10 digs each, followed by
Williams and Ian Burnham, who had eight and seven respectively.
They were aided by sophomore middle blocker Scott Morrow, who
posted a team leading 4.5 of the Bruins’ 12 blocks.
The twin losses ended up as a blessing in disguise and, in the
end, there was no other team the Bruins would rather have
faced.
“We were excited to play them,” Shrader said.
“We thought we were better and wanted a chance to show we
could win.”
And the win couldn’t have come at a better time. With the
team heading to Provo, Utah for the final two rounds of MPSF
playoffs this week, they’re hitting their mental and physical
peak at the perfect time.
“I think we played with more intensity and fire than we
have in awhile,” Mount said. “This was definitely the
kind of play we need to win the championship and it’s good to
see we have it and can bring it out when we need it.”
It may be as simple as Scates says it is.
“They won when it didn’t matter and we won when it
did.”
But that’s just the Bruin way.