Men’s volleyball to continue East Coast tour against Ohio State
Freshman Micah Ma’a posted five kills and 12 assists in Tuesday’s straight set win over No. 14 George Mason. (Aubrey Yeo/Daily Bruin senior staff)
By Tanner Walters
Jan. 7, 2016 9:32 a.m.
The UCLA men’s volleyball team is in unfamiliar territory, but to have a successful start to 2016 the Bruins need only become familiar with one thing: winning.
Midway through its East Coast tour, No. 5 UCLA (1-0) finds itself in University Park, Pennsylvania, preparing for a neutral site showdown with No. 6 Ohio State (1-1) on Thursday afternoon. The Bruins began their road trip in Fairfax, Virginia with a straight-set takedown of the No. 14 George Mason Patriots (0-1), shrugging off any jet lag that threatened to affect their 2016 opener.
The team then bused north to Penn State, where the Bruins will now gear up to face the Buckeyes and the host Nittany Lions on back-to-back days.
The Bruins have seen little of either school across the country in recent years. UCLA matched up against both during a Hawaii tournament in 2014, but the team hasn’t competed further east than Provo, Utah, since the 2009 season.
All of that adds up to a week of adjustments and adaptation.
“We’ll be watching film all day (Wednesday), get a game plan going, just really study like how we did against George Mason,” said junior middle blocker Mitch Stahl. “Try to know them better than we know ourselves, come up with a plan and execute it like we did tonight. I think if we do that we’ll be pretty successful on Thursday night.”
It will be no small task for the Bruins to match their offensive execution, however, as they held a .538 kill percentage against the Patriots, including an eye-popping .933 mark in the second set. Both Stahl and sophomore outside hitter J.T. Hatch attributed the success of the attackers to newly improved passing, something that will immediately be tested against the Buckeyes.
Ohio State had three players who averaged over three kills per set in 2015, with two of them – junior outside hitter Miles Johnson and sophomore outside hitter Nicolas Szerszen – still on the roster.
“They have some good outside hitters, guys with some arms. I think their team is going to be better,” said coach John Speraw. “They’ve been competing versus some great teams in the Midwest, St. Louis and Loyola, they’ve been really good. … So this is a team that is experienced and well-coached, and I think we’re going to have a real big fight on our hands when we get up there.”
The Buckeyes are fresh off a sweep of the Princeton Tigers and, although they lost their season opener to the top-ranked Canadian squad, are looking to build on a 2015 season that saw them go 22-9 overall. Standing in their way, though, is a young group of Bruins who are looking for some redemption after a historic down year, in which the 19-time NCAA champions finished below .500.
“Ohio State isn’t a team you see in conference play, so we’re going to spend our travel day watching a lot of film, getting to know the team,” said Hatch. “We’re going to have a really good practice in the days leading up and then go out there and play our hardest.”
With contributing reports from Grant Sugimura, Bruin Sports contributor.
