MERCEDES DORAME The Bruins celebrate after their
five-game win over Washington State Friday. UCLA also took five
games to beat Washington on Saturday. UCLA d.
Wash. St. 27-30, 30-25, 29-31, 30-28, 15-9 UCLA d.
Washington 25-30, 30-24, 30-25, 24-30,15-12
By Andrew Borders
Daily Bruin Reporter
Though the recent play of the No. 8 UCLA women’s
volleyball team has been underwhelming, they proved the validity of
their top ten ranking in this weekend’s narrow victories
against conference underlings Washington and Washington State.
Although the team has, thus far, fallen short of their pre-season
expectations, the Bruins do have at least one thing to their
credit.
They definitely keep it interesting.
UCLA (13-6, 8-4 Pac-10) needed five games to defeat both
unranked Washington schools. In what has become a trend in the
eight matches the Bruins have split since last month’s
five-game collapse against Stanford, the Bruins started out
stagnant against teams that should never have had a chance.
The Bruins dropped the first game of both matches, 30-27 on
Friday and 30-25 on Saturday, before recovering to tie both matches
with wins in the second games, 30-25 and 30-24, respectively.
“I think we got stunned a little bit in that first
game,” UCLA head coach Andy Banachowski said. “It took
us a while to get a feel for them.”
“They just kept going after us,” UCLA freshman
middle blocker/outside hitter Heather Cullen added. “There
wasn’t a point where they let down. They weren’t really
that emotional, they were just steady.”
Friday, the Cougars (13-10, 7-8) threatened to win their first
match at Pauley Pavilion since 1997 by taking the third game 31-29.
But the Bruins were able to avoid what would have been an
embarrassing defeat by winning game four 30-28 and taking the match
with a 15-9 game five win.
“It’s a real hard loss to take,” Cougar head
coach Cindy Fredrick said. “We shouldn’t have lost. We
just didn’t play good ball when we had to. We made stupid
mistakes when it was really key.”
Despite hitting a mediocre .228, UCLA won the hitting percentage
battle by holding the Cougars to a sub-par .186, including .074 in
the fifth game.
Saturday, the Bruins wrestled control of the crucial third game
from the Huskies (11-13, 4-11) by tying the game at 22 and going on
an 8-5 run to take a 2-1 lead. But Washington extended the match
with a 30-24 win in the fourth game before UCLA narrowly avoided
defeat, winning 15-12 in game five.
“We won in every statistical category,” Washington
head coach Jim McLaughlin said. “We out-hit them, we out-dug
them, we were close in blocks.”
Washington did out hit and out dig the Bruins .261 to .258 and
90-84, but fell just short in assists, 75-74, blocks, 10-9.5, and
in games, 3-2.