To say that UCLA women’s volleyball has had an easy week would be like saying that the 405 Freeway runs smoothly at rush hour. By the end of this week, they will have played four games in nine days, three of them against top-five teams.
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Westwood will be the place to be for Pac-12 volleyball this weekend, as No. 7 UCLA prepares to host the top two teams in the country on back-to-back nights. The Bruins will take on the No. 2 ranked Stanford Cardinal on Friday, and will have less than 24 hours of rest before playing the top-ranked Golden Bears of Cal on Saturday.
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his weekend will be a pivotal early-season test for the team. They split their last trip to Washington, defeating the Washington State Cougars in three sets on Friday but falling to No. 4 Washington in three sets the next night.
UCLA was out-served by Washington, and struggled with passing the ball and getting into their offense. The Bruins also tallied an uncharacteristically high 17 attack errors and were unable to score any points off service aces against Washington.
“We didn’t play as well as we should have. We didn’t really show up at all to play. We know that if we play like that in the future there’s definitely going to be trouble,” junior outside hitter Rachael Kidder said.
“Normally we do have really good ball control, that’s one of our strengths. Saturday, it wasn’t really there, they out-served us, they were serving us pretty tough and we weren’t really passing that well, but I think for the most part we’re a good ball-control team,” Kidder said. “Whenever we’re in control we can dominate the whole game.”
Kidder collected 16 kills against Washington State and 10 against Washington, and senior libero Lainey Gera moved to second all-time in UCLA history last week with 1,563 digs.
Whether it was just an off night for the Bruins or indicative of a greater problem, players say the team has moved on and is focusing on the future.
“We’re just going to try to forget about that match and not dwell on it all, I think we’re already over it and we just need to really focus on the two teams we have coming up,” Kidder said.
“As long as we have a good week of practice and everyone’s focused and pays attention to what we’re supposed to do, I think we’ll be fine.”
Sophomore outside hitter Kelly Reeves added that the trip home allowed the team some time to recuperate and lick their wounds.
Reeves had a big weekend for the Bruins as well, contributing eight kills in the win and nine in the loss.
“(Saturday night) we regrouped as a team and had a couple hours to mope about stuff, but we got on the plane (the next day) and we all forgot about it, and we’re looking forward to this weekend now,” Reeves said.
Coach Mike Sealy agreed that the team had moved past the loss but added that there were still things that the team could learn from watching footage of Saturday’s game.
“I think we’re not attached to the end result, but we need to look at film sessions to pinpoint the areas we could have improved on physically, mentally and emotionally. We’re not quite done with this match yet,” Sealy said.
Sealy has been working hard to prepare the team for Stanford and Cal, and for good reason. Stanford sophomores Carly Wopat and Rachel Williams currently account for 60 percent of the team’s kills ““ Williams averages 5.09 kills a set to Wopat’s 3.09.
UCLA will need to be prepared for both Stanford’s big hitters and Cal’s more balanced squad that has won 39 of 40 sets this season, remains undefeated and features five players averaging at least two kills per set.
Sealy added that the timing for the home games was beneficial, as new students and fans should be in attendance to cheer on the team this weekend.
“With all the new students on campus, it’ll be nice to get some home-crowd support now that school’s in session,” Sealy said.
The season is still young, and there’s still a lot of volleyball on the schedule, which translates to time for the team to work and improve.
“I think we’re still trying to figure it out (our identity). We know we’re a good team but we need to play like it all the time. Sometimes we’re good, sometimes we’re bad, it’s up and down, but we know we’re a good team,” Reeves said.
Reeves also said the weekend would be an important test to see how the team rebounds after a loss, saying that they could either dwell on the loss or rise to the occasion against two elite Pac-12 opponents. The team is going to focus on the latter.
“I think the tone of this week will be good, and we’re going to be hungry to play.”