Midseason marks inflection point for UCLA men’s volleyball
Redshirt freshman middle blocker Eric Sprague said that the Bruins have to play smart, be physical and give 100 percent all the time. (Hannah Ye/Daily Bruin)
By Claire Fahy
March 5, 2015 2:38 a.m.
At this point last season, the UCLA men’s volleyball team had everything to lose. The Bruins jumped out to an unprecedented 9-0 opening record, were led by a highly touted senior class and were projected to make a run for the NCAA title.
Staring down the second half of the season 9-2 in conference play, the 2014 team had a clear-cut path to the postseason.
That’s when it all fell apart.
UCLA hit a three-game skid that culminated in a 6-7 record for the second half of the season.
“We’ve got to go out and remember that we’ve got to play the game. The past couple games we’ve let teams bully us around and make us play their games,” said then-freshman outside hitter Michael Fisher after being swept by UC Santa Barbara in the 2014 regular season.
This season is a different story.
The Bruins stand at 6-6 in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, good for seventh place in the conference. In contrast to last year’s team, UCLA has nothing to lose as it reaches for a postseason berth.
“This team is a far different team. We’re talking about a much different group of athletes with different experience levels and different personalities,” said coach John Speraw. “The challenge of every year is to put all the different components of your team together and build them into one tight group and it’s always different every year.”
For both the 2014 and 2015 programs, this midway point in the season presented a turning point. This season, the Bruins will look to fine-tune their errors on offense as they face most opponents for a second time.
Just like the 2014 program, for the 2015 Bruins, there is no room for error.
“It’s a lot of just how you play and what type of volleyball you’re playing,” said redshirt freshman middle blocker Eric Sprague. “We have to play smart and we have to be physical and we have to give 100 percent all the time.”
Having struggled through being swept by four different opponents to start the season, working to finalize an efficient lineup and looking for leaders on an inexperienced team, the Bruins enter the second half of the season with more experience and more knowledge of what to expect.
“We’ve shown some flashes of execution that I think are quite good, we just don’t do it in long enough stretches,” Speraw said. “We’re going to have to be much more consistent at that high level of play, which we’re completely capable of doing.”
