No. 1 UCLA men’s volleyball serves Cal Baptist straight-set loss

Even on a messy night, the UCLA men’s volleyball team still cleaned up Cal Baptist.

The No. 1 Bruins (6-0, 3-0 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) swept the unranked Lancers (3-3, 0-3) with set scores of 27-25, 25-21 and 25-12 for its sixth win in a row.

The match only went three sets so the personal statistics were relatively low, but the results were still just as good as they’ve been throughout the entire 2016 season so far.

The middle blockers led the way as redshirt sophomore Oliver Martin and junior Mitch Stahl both tallied seven kills. Martin hit for a perfect 1.000 while Stahl added his kills at a .500 mark.

The setting duo of junior Hagen Smith and freshman Micah Ma’a had a solid performance, providing consistency once again. The pair combined for 33 assists and 10 kills over the three sets.

The Bruins’ underwhelming offensive output was offset by their serving and service defense. Aces were impossible for the Lancers to come by, as they finished the night with zero in the match. On the other side of the net, the Bruins – with three coming off the hands of Ma’a – had 11.

“It’s really just practicing with the team,” Ma’a said of the Bruins service skills. “Practicing with great servers and practicing with good passers has really upped our (service) game in all aspects.”

The Lancers had a trio of players contribute heavily, but lacked a very consistent attack. Sophomore outside hitter Rohit Paul led the home team with 10 kills, while senior outside hitter Rocky DeLyon followed up with eight and sophomore setter Zachary Melcher had 25 assists.

The first set saw a scrappy CBU team come back from multiple deficits to tie it up at 25, but kills from Smith and Stahl finally put the set away for UCLA with a score of 27-25.

The Lancers took an early lead in the second set only to have the Bruins catch up with their spectacular serving. The Bruins finished off the set with a 25-21 win.

Jumping out to a 7-3 lead, the Bruins never looked back in the third and final set. UCLA began to look like a No. 1 team again, as its offense moved with a fluidity that, until then, had not been seen in the rest of the match.

“Earlier, we weren’t really playing our game,” Stahl said. “We weren’t hitting super well and, today, we just needed some time to settle in.”

Despite Wednesday’s less-than-stellar match, the Bruins were still able to come away with a straight-set victory and coach John Speraw was proud of his team’s grit.

“We were offensively quite poor tonight for the first two sets, we didn’t connect well, our routes weren’t very sharp and our shot selections weren’t good.” Speraw said. “We worked hard, though, it wasn’t from lack of effort, and since we were working hard we dug a little bit more and we were able to give ourselves more opportunities throughout the match.”