UCLA women’s volleyball vanquishes Oregon State in three-set win
Senior outside hitter Jordan Anderson (left) led the team with two aces Wednesday night. Anderson thrived from the right side, coming up with nine kills overall in UCLA’s 3-0 sweep of Oregon State. (Dayoung Lee/Daily Bruin)
By Melissa Zhang
Nov. 17, 2016 1:56 a.m.
Despite a low crowd energy, the UCLA women’s volleyball team managed to strike up enough momentum to sweep Oregon State in three sets.
The No. 9 Bruins (22-5, 13-4 Pac-12) hosted the unranked Beavers (11-17, 4-13 Pac-12) on Wednesday for their first home game this month.
“We didn’t execute great tonight but it was obvious that it was just gonna be one of those nights, and you just have to be okay with that,” coach Michael Sealy said. “You’re gonna win when things are perfect, we have to be able to win when things are off.”
UCLA is coming off of the recent win against No. 12 Stanford. The Bruins took down the Cardinal in five sets Saturday in the concluding match of their four-game stint on the road.
[Related: Women’s volleyball knocks down Stanford in five-set match]
The Beavers managed to take the lead in the first set 7-6 and continued fighting to keep things close. After tying things up at 11, UCLA overpowered Oregon State with an offensive onslaught and ran away 25-22 in the first set, the final kill courtesy of freshman opposite/outside hitter Torrey Van Winden.
Van Winden tallied five kills for the Bruins in the first set, hitting .333 and adding a total of nine kills for the match, helping them continue their decade-long win streak against the Beavers.
“It’s really easy to look too far into the future and we talked about just keeping our minds one game at a time,” Van Winden said. “So coming into this, we just had to have as much fire as possible.”
The Bruins took the lead early in the second set 10-5. Oregon State’s outside hitters Mary-Kate Marshall and Lanesha Reagan posed an offensive threat to UCLA, both of whom recording five kills. The Beavers posted a total of 10 team blocks up at the net.
But after the Bruins took that lead, Oregon State couldn’t keep up for much longer.
UCLA ended up taking the second set 25-14 with strong serves that consistently kept its opponent out of system.
Bruin senior outside hitter Jordan Anderson posted nine kills from the outside and opposite slots. The outside hitter said that they knew Oregon State was going to come out fiery because they had just come off of a win against Colorado.
The third set was also a closer race at first, with Oregon State tying things up at 7. UCLA went on to put an eight-point deficit between its opponent at 22-14, and held the Beavers scoreless thereafter to win the deciding set 25-14.
UCLA moves into the top slot in the Pac-12 with this win, and will take on No. 19 Oregon this Friday.
Anderson said that the team knows they are capable of a strong playoff run, which is why each game has to be taken seriously regardless of their tough schedule.
“Going into the tournament, you need to be able to win in a variety of ways,” Sealy said. “And this is one of them.”
