Women’s volleyball sweeps Arizona teams in straight sets

The women’s volleyball team fired up its fans early on Sunday, tossing out miniature pink volleyballs during pregame introductions.

The Bruins gave the crowd plenty more reasons to cheer during the match.

No. 12 UCLA put together its second impressive performance of the weekend, adding a straight-set victory over No. 10 Arizona State (15-4, 4-4 Pac-12) on top of Friday night’s dominant defeat of No. 14 Arizona (13-6, 3-4).

“We didn’t want to compete with the energy of the crowd, but rather play with it,” said junior outside hitter Claire Felix. “I think our mentality going into it was just be us. Our energy is enough. … We didn’t want to get too amped or too low, but rather just find that happy medium.”

Feeding off the high-energy crowd, the Bruins jumped out to early leads in the first two sets, never allowing the Sun Devils to establish any type of rhythm. UCLA was a step slower to start the third set, falling behind 15-10 and prompting coach Michael Sealy to use his final timeout of the set.

“I told them that this was the exact third set that we played against Washington State (on Oct. 4). … We got down huge. I told the girls to relax, settle in and everything is fine,” Sealy said. “Today, when we got down huge again, the second time-out was ‘Let’s just relax, trust and build some momentum.'”

The coach’s message seemed to work, as the Bruins rallied to beat the Sun Devils 30-28 in an exhilarating and hard-fought final set.

Sophomore outside hitter Reily Buechler said the team was able to come back by gaining consistent momentum.

“Our energy was low to start the third set. After halftime, that 10 minutes of not having that momentum anymore and then having to come out and bring the momentum back is difficult,” Buechler said. “So, I think we’ve just got to continue to play our game. At the end, we were touching balls, touching everything, scrambling, and it was more fun at the end. We’ve got to keep our energy up regardless of that break in the middle.”

Four Bruins recorded double-digit kills, as the team hit .266 on Sunday, and redshirt sophomore setter Ryann Chandler produced 43 assists and 14 digs. Felix and junior middle blocker Jennie Frager each posted errorless performances, generating 11 and 12 kills respectively.

The whole team limited its errors on Friday night, committing only six total in the win over the Wildcats. Buechler notched 16 kills without a single error, hitting .516 to lead the Bruins to a season-best .373 hitting percentage.

“We were running a really good offense on Friday. (Chandler) was getting me matchups in which I was only one-on-one and I had no block up and I was just playing my game,” said Buechler. “It was fun going out and playing Arizona because they are a feisty team and they wanted to win really badly, but so did we.”