Women’s volleyball falls to Washington’s blocking, serving strategy
Sophomore outside hitter Reily Buechler and the Bruins were tested by the tough blocking of No. 3 Washington on Sunday. Buechler said she initially tried to hit the ball down the line but the Huskies adjusted their blocks to take away the line. (Aubrey Yeo/Daily Bruin senior staff)
By David Gottlieb
Nov. 3, 2015 12:57 a.m.
After a tough loss that cost No. 9 UCLA a chance at second place in the Pac-12, women’s volleyball coach Michael Sealy broke down No. 3 Washington’s strategy into two simple, but lethal, components.
“They’re going to serve tough to get you out of system, and then put up a big block in front of you,” Sealy said. “That’s their forte.”
The combination of tough serves and strong blocks stymied the Bruins (18-4, 9-3 Pac-12) on Sunday, as the Huskies (20-2, 10-2) shut them down 3-1.
In its 26-24 second-set victory, UCLA countered Washington’s blocking ability by diverting attention away from the outside hitters.
“I think we got our middles more involved in that second set,” said redshirt sophomore outside hitter Jessyka Ngauamo. “That took more pressure off (sophomore outside hitter) Reily (Buechler) and me on the outside.”
By raising the threat of an attack from their middles, the Bruins frustrated the Huskies’ timing and prevented their opponents from getting up big blocks by the pins. As the match went on, however, Washington’s tough serves stifled the involvement of the UCLA middles.
“Washington probably served us tougher than any other team, so we were out of system the whole time,” Sealy said. “In a match like today when everything was going to be out of system, nonperfect passes, it’s not really a middle kind of day.”
Washington’s tough serves led to wayward passes that didn’t give freshman setter Zana Muno the option to go to the middle, leading outside hitters to out-kill middles 31-15 over the course of the match.
With the pressure back on the pin hitters, Buechler and Ngauamo had to attack with tact.
“We had to hit a bunch of line, a lot of tooling, because it’s a big block and you can’t hit down into them,” Buechler said. “You have to hit high up on their hands.”
Ngauamo also saw the block as an opportunity to tool, or purposefully knock the ball off the blockers’ hands and out of bounds.
“You can put a positive spin on it and think you’ve got a big target up there to hit off,” Ngauamo said. “Rather than a big brick wall that’s going to shut you down every time.”
Even with these hitting improvements, Washington’s blockers were relentless.
“I think they made a couple adjustments on me,” Buechler said. “Once we got into the fourth game it was tough to keep on rallying. They’re just a really smart blocking team and they know what to block and they beat us. I ended up hitting a lot of line and they took that away a couple times.”
Buechler said hitting down the line was effective because it kept Washington’s libero from passing the ball, but the Huskies eventually caught on to this strategy and tailored their block to keep Buechler from using the line.
Sealy was happy that his hitters at least forced the Husky blockers to make an adjustment. The Bruins improved their hitting percentage from .070 in the team’s Oct. 2 matchup against the Huskies to .156 on Sunday, and extended the match to four games instead of three.
“Our hitters did a good job of using the block,” Sealy said. “Much more so than when we played at our place last time.”
Unfortunately for UCLA, an improvement on “last time” still was not enough to pull off a win this time.
