Bruin women’s volleyball comes home to face Cardinal, Golden Bears

UCLA women’s volleyball beat Stanford on Oct. 29, 2011, en route to the Bruins’ first national championship in 20 years.

The Cardinal have won the past seven matchups since.

“Every year is different,” said coach Michael Sealy. “It’s not like UCLA vs. Stanford, it’s 16 kids vs. 16 kids there, and both teams are different every single year.”

This weekend, the No. 15 UCLA (14-4, 5-3 Pac-12) team starts off a four-match homestand against No. 14 Stanford (11-5, 5-3 Pac-12) and California (8-10, 2-6 Pac-12).

UCLA has lost to a few middle-of-the-road conference teams, but so has fellow powerhouse program Stanford. The two teams enter Friday’s match with identical conference records, as both teams split matches against the Arizona schools earlier this season.

“I think some of the losses in the first half were awesome for this particular team,” Sealy said. “It was just a nice little adjustment and refocus on what’s really important, so everyone is working well.”

This week’s matches come after a dominant road trip in which the Bruins toppled the No. 23 Oregon Ducks and Oregon State Beavers for their best week in Pac-12 play thus far.

“I think after last weekend our confidence is definitely getting better,” said junior outside hitter Reily Buechler. “We’re just trying to keep on doing what we were doing in Oregon. … Hopefully we can just stay together the entire game, play some seriously good defense because they have some good hitters.”

The need to play good defense falls on senior libero Taylor Formico, who is the reigning Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Week. FloVolleyball also named Formico the No. 1 NCAA libero, in part thanks to her 51 digs last week and career-high 36 digs against Arizona the previous week.

Formico, currently fourth on UCLA’s all-time digs list with 1,370, could move to third this week with 35 digs.

The Cardinal currently lead the nation in blocking with 3.42 blocks per set, led by redshirt senior middle blocker Inky Ajanaku, whose 536 blocks are the fifth most all-time for Stanford.

California, on the other hand, has seen less success this season, but its two conference wins have come against Colorado and Arizona, both of which previously beat UCLA.

“Cal is kind of one of those teams who might not win all of the games, but they have a lot of potential and they can come out. If they have the energy that day, then they are a very hard opponent,” said sophomore opposite Zana Muno. “We just can’t take them lightly, we have to give them their credit. If we take care of our own things, I think we should be good to go.”