Freshmen settle into starting roles for men’s volleyball

Eric Matheis had to grow up quickly.

A freshman on a rebuilding UCLA men’s volleyball team, the setter stayed on the bench for the opening weeks of the conference season. The rookie watched as junior Steve O’Dell and sophomore Hagen Smith, veteran setters, traded the starting spot between them.

Following O’Dell’s departure from the team and Smith’s recent hand injury, Matheis is now in sole possession of the starting setter role with little experience and a lot of responsibility.

Matheis hadn’t started since Feb. 6 before he was thrown back into the lineup on March 28. The freshman was promoted just in time to face then-No. 9 USC, then-No. 1 Hawai’i, then-No. 3 Pepperdine and then-No. 4 UC Irvine.

No. 12 UCLA dropped each of those games, but only two of the matchups ended in three-game sweeps. The game against USC and the first game against Hawai’i were pushed to five sets.

The Bruins now stare down the first round of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament, where they will face the Anteaters, who handed UCLA a 3-1 loss on April 10. The key to playoff success for the program will be consistency against top-ranked talent.

“Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen a couple things: One is that our passing has continued to improve, and the second thing is that we’ve got Matheis integrated into the offense even though he hasn’t been playing a whole lot this year,” said coach John Speraw.

In the Bruins’ final conference contest against the Stanford Cardinal on Friday, UCLA swept the competition 3-0. Matheis posted 15 assists per set, and the Bruins hit .430 to help them clinch an MPSF quarterfinal berth.

“We focused on taking it point by point instead of looking at the big picture,” Matheis said. “Coach Speraw kinda had made it feel like it was the playoffs, having us go out there and compete for every point.”

From this point on in Matheis’ first collegiate season, it is officially playoff time. In his last seven starts, the freshman had an average of 11.1 assists per set and the team hit an average of .287. Matheis will have to do that and more if the Bruins hope to advance further into the postseason.

Matheis won’t be the only freshman under the spotlight when the conference tournament starts Saturday. Fellow freshmen Jake Arnitz and J.T. Hatch, both outside hitters, were named to the Off the Block/Springbak, Inc. Freshmen All-American Team on Monday. Freshman opposite Christian Hessenauer also received votes.

Arnitz’s season average of 0.31 aces per game led all MPSF freshmen while his offensive output of 2.73 kills per game was second-best for the Bruins. The player contributing most kills per game was Hatch with 2.85, which led all MPSF freshmen. The outside-hitter duo will be heavily relied on in UCLA’s postseason efforts.

“We’re playing better volleyball, so hopefully we can just take this week and train hard,” Hatch said. “If we do that, we’ll have a good match on Saturday. We just have to keep doing the basics.”

With contributing reports by Tanner Walters, Bruin Sports reporter.