Men’s volleyball regains focus, defeats UCSD in straight sets
Saturday night’s blowout of UC San Diego gave freshman setter/hitter Micah Ma’a and the UCLA men’s volleyball team their 12th win of the 2016 season. (Kathy Chen/Daily Bruin)
By Phil Share
Feb. 14, 2016 12:25 p.m.
It didn’t take long for UCLA men’s volleyball to bounce back from its Thursday night defeat at the hands of UC Irvine.
The No. 2 Bruins (12-2, 8-2 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) demolished unranked UC San Diego (3-11, 0-10) Saturday night in the John Wooden Center in a sweep (25-16, 25-17, 25-18). The loss marked the 32nd consecutive conference loss for the Tritons, dating back to 2014.
“It was a lot better than what we’ve seen recently,” said sophomore outside hitter JT Hatch. “Overall, that was pretty good for us.”
The Bruins fell into an early deficit – going down 4-1 in the first set – but stayed sharp for the rest of the night. They made just two hitting errors in the second set, one of which was the result of a questionable call that UCLA argued briefly.
Despite two UCLA players registering double-digit kills – sophomore outside hitter Jake Arnitz and Hatch both had 11 kills – the lack of skill on the Tritons’ end contributed equally to the UCLA victory.
Early in the second set, a Bruin mistake caused a very slow-moving ball to loft aimlessly onto the Triton side. Instead of being dealt with aptly, the UCSD players watched it drop onto the floor, losing one of many points on the evening.
“I thought we had good energy throughout the night,” said freshman libero Davis Gillett. “I thought we were blocking pretty well, I thought we passed the ball well.”
Saturday’s win represented the second time this season that UCLA rebounded immediately following an upset loss.
“We’ve had a couple rough matches,” Gillett said. “We needed to come out and battle, so it was good.”
Although the Bruins handled UCSD in straight sets, there was no feeling of overconfidence after the game.
Coach John Speraw highlighted focus as a potential improvement for his squad.
“It’s just a matter of how disciplined you are in preparing yourself to play that next point,” Speraw said. “Tonight I thought we did that.”
UCLA has a challenging road trip ahead of them, with visits to No. 6 Stanford and No. 8 Pepperdine. The Bruins will have to keep Speraw’s comments in mind if they are to continue their successes on the road.
“Getting out there and being focused, and giving 100 percent competitive effort throughout an entire volleyball match is what we need to become better at,” Speraw said. “I think tonight we showed that we can do it.”
