Men’s volleyball wavers heading into final stretch, highlighting season’s flaws

The UCLA men’s volleyball team spent its weekend fighting against an unpleasant reality. Battling, scrambling and ultimately stumbling, the Bruins spent two straight nights doing what little they could against the BYU Cougars. The results were the same in both matches, and the message was loud and clear:

UCLA isn’t good enough.

The Bruins entered the series atop the nation in the rankings, but coach John Speraw had no illusions as to where his team stands.

“It was a little disappointing, but we’re not better than they are – that was clear,” Speraw said.

There was plenty that went wrong for now-No. 4 UCLA (21-5, 15-5 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) over the weekend. But, while the Bruins were sloppy on their side of the net at times, it was mostly No. 1 BYU (21-3, 17-3) that caused fits for the home team.

The Cougars, the nation’s top hitting squad, had their way with the Bruin defense. A trio of BYU hitters combined for 83 percent of the team’s offensive production and faced few blocking fronts over the course of both nights. In comparison, UCLA’s top three leaders made up 65 percent of the Bruins’ kills.

“They’re big and physical,” said sophomore outside hitter JT Hatch. “We haven’t seen a team like that in a while so we probably didn’t respond too great to it and they beat us.”

The Bruins committed 35 service errors in total for the two matches. Although a staggering amount, the performance actually lowered the team’s season errors-per-set average. Both teams traded a number of aces, but Cougar junior Jake Langlois tallied six total, including four Saturday night.

BYU’s offensive presence might not have even been its most imposing force. UCLA’s opponents had been averaging seven blocks every four sets, but BYU doubled that with 28 total in its two four-set victories over the weekend. With a wall in their faces, there were few opportunities for Bruin hitters to have breakout performances.

Hatch, who struggled with errors Friday, anchored the team Saturday. Sophomore outside hitter Jake Arnitz, however, was the inverse, totaling nine errors on the second night alone.

Size and physicality aren’t always things you can simulate in practice, Speraw said, so it’s going to take a sound game plan and improvement across the court to get a different result next time.

“Hopefully we play them again and have another shot,” Speraw said.

The home stretch

The scrum that is the top of the MPSF standings got a little clearer over the weekend.

BYU’s takedown of UCLA guarantees that the Bruins can finish no higher than second and No. 3 Stanford’s win over No. 5 Long Beach State leaves two distinct tiers in the top half of the conference.

All four teams have two remaining matches this week. BYU hosts unranked USC for both, while Long Beach faces unranked UCSD and No. 15 UC Irvine. Stanford and UCLA play each other Thursday night before both teams compete against a separate top-10 foe to finish the season.

The seeding battle will determine the MPSF playoff bracket, but the quartet has collectively clinched first-round hosting privileges.

Injury notes

Junior middle blocker Mitch Stahl, who sat out the three matches before the BYU series due to an undisclosed injury with his left leg, returned midway through Friday’s match.

“You just have to be positive this whole time,” the veteran leader said. “This stretch run, we’re playing the best teams in the country – we’ve got Stanford and Pepperdine and they serve the ball hard. You just have to be out there, you have to be that positive rock that everyone can look to.”

UCLA hadn’t been in the situation of losing back-to-back matches until the weekend, but they hadn’t faced a team of BYU’s caliber, either. While the losses delivered a knockout blow to the Bruins’ regular season title hopes, the team’s focus now centers on the adjustments they can make going forward – a potential date with the Cougars in the conference tournament looming.