Playing the top two teams in the Pac-10 ““ and two of the top three in the nation ““ on the road and staying close in both matches would have probably required the UCLA women’s volleyball team to play at its best.
Coach Mike Sealy said his team didn’t play its best volleyball, but it put up an impressive fight against premier competition. It began the weekend with a 23-25, 16-25, 26-24, 23-25 loss to No. 3 Stanford on Friday, and then forced No. 2 California to five sets in a 18-25, 25-22, 25-21, 19-25, 14-16 loss on Saturday.
“If you told me that we were going to travel to Stanford and Cal, and we weren’t going to play well, then I would have told you we would have gotten blown out 3-0, 3-0,” Sealy said. “I’m not going to say we played terrible, but our offense wasn’t really in sync.
We didn’t play as well as we were playing in the past, and yet we still had opportunities to win, so we’ve got to be thankful for it.”
After Cal took the opening set Saturday, UCLA responded in the second, scoring six straight points to turn an 18-20 deficit into a 24-20 lead. The Bruins went up 2-1 with a third-set victory, and the Bears tied the match again with a fourth-set win to force a decisive fifth set in which the Bruins fought all the way back from a big deficit, but fell short.
Cal took control of the fifth with a 7-2 lead, but UCLA went on a 6-0 run to take an 8-7 lead. The Bears took the lead right back at 11-9, and didn’t let it go for the rest of the set. At 14-14, attack errors by sophomore opposite Rachael Kidder and junior middle blocker Katie Camp gave Cal its last two points.
The loss was a tough one to stomach.
“It hurts to lose, and definitely, this was a very hard loss for me and our team,” senior outside hitter Dicey McGraw said. McGraw led the Bruins on Saturday, setting a career-high with 24 kills for the match. UCLA hit a .241 clip in the match, and Cal hit .292.
UCLA’s four-set loss to Stanford on Friday set the tone for the weekend.
After Stanford won the first two sets, UCLA answered back with a third-set win, and made small runs in the fourth to shorten the Stanford lead, but the Cardinal answered back to take the set and the match. McGraw led with 17 kills, and the Bruins hit .181 for the match, while the Cardinal hit .252.
McGraw was frustrated because of the loss, but knew the quality of the team UCLA was up against.
“They’re a great team, so it’s hard to say something negative about the way we played,” McGraw said.
That could be applied to both the Bruins’ opponents this weekend, and though they went 0-2, sophomore outside hitter Bojana Todorovic said the losses will give the team confidence in the long run.
“It’s almost going to make us even better, really, because next time we have a tight game, we know we’re going to win because we’re going to want it more,” Todorovic said.