Volleyball tunes up against Irvine
By Daily Bruin Staff
April 17, 1995 9:00 p.m.
Volleyball tunes up against Irvine
Bruins finish regular season with Anteaters, look ahead to
playoffs
By Eric Branch
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
After enduring a nightmarish 2-20 1994 campaign, the UC Irvine
men’s volleyball team arrived in Pauley Pavilion last Feb. 22 with
an impressive 4-3 record, with three of their wins coming over
ranked teams.
While the numbers may appear relatively modest, for the
Anteaters it was several steps up from the ’94 season  where
they often came to matches disguised as punching bags. However,
after swaggering into Westwood in February with some new-found
braggadocio  they left experiencing painful flashbacks after
top-ranked UCLA beat them up like rent-a-mules 15-7, 15-5, 15-6 in
just over an hour.
"There has been a history of teams taking nosedives after
getting real high to play us, and then going into a real losing
streak afterwards," UCLA head coach Al Scates said. "That’s what
has happened to them."
Indeed, since the beating, UCI has floundered to a 5-9 record
with none of its wins coming over ranked teams. Making the picture
even less rosy for the Anteaters (9-13 overall, 6-12 in Mountain
Pacific Sports Federation), they enter tonight’s 7 p.m. match with
No. 1 UCLA (25-1, 18-0) at Crawford Hall, having already been
eliminated from this weekend’s MPSF playoffs.
To make an already bleak situation pathetic, UCI sports a 0-28
career record against the Bruins. However, with the match being the
regular-season finale for both teams, these facts make Scates
somewhat wary.
"This is their last match of the season," Scates said. "In this
situation they have nothing to lose, they’re playing at home and
they’ll be real loose. It’s one of these situations where it can
just be win, win for them."
While a loosey-goosey Custer probably would not have had much
success in his final battle, the Anteaters are not without some
talent. Senior opposite Leland Quinn ranks sixth in the nation in
kills per game (7.00) and also holds UCI single-season records with
567 kills and 1,121 attempts.
As for the Bruins, they enter tonight’s match on a roll, having
won 13 straight matches and 39 of their last 43 games. Their hot
streak has them peaking at just the right time as they prepare to
enter the MPSF playoffs.
"We’re ready to play now," Scates said. "But I’m glad we have a
tune-up match before the playoffs to break things up."
