Sophomores steal seniors’ spotlight

Monday, April 13, 1998

Sophomores steal seniors’ spotlight

VOLLEYBALL: Last game in Pauley a win, due to underclassmen’s
play

By Grace Wen

Daily Bruin Staff

It was a fitting season finale for the three seniors of the UCLA
men’s volleyball team.

Before an astonishing crowd of 2,919 in Pauley Pavilion, the
Bruins defeated Pepperdine 9-15, 15-10, 15-9, 15-5 to honor seniors
Tom Stillwell, Ben Moselle and Charlie Jackson in their last
regular season home game.

However, it wasn’t the performance of the seniors that was the
key to the match.

Despite Moselle’s 19 kills and .349 attack percentage (a drastic
improvement from his last performance against Pepperdine in which
he had only 11 kills at a .194 clip), it was the outstanding play
from the three sophomores in the Bruin starting lineup that carried
UCLA to victory.

Sophomores Evan Thatcher, Adam Naeve and Brandon Taliaferro
combined for over half the team’s kills and nine of UCLA’s 11 aces.
Thatcher and Naeve led the Bruin attack with 20 kills apiece. Naeve
also bombed three aces while Thatcher served one.

Setter Brandon Taliaferro paced UCLA with 71 assists and had 11
kills including four-point winning jousts. But it was his strong
serving that kept the Pepperdine offense out of sync. Taliaferro
blasted five aces and led UCLA in digging with 13.

The Bruin bench also contributed in the win as well. Fred Robins
replaced Mark Williams after game one while Danny Farmer came off
the bench in game three to spark the team.

"This is how we beat them the first time," UCLA head coach Al
Scates said.

"We put people out there and if they’re not performing well, we
put somebody else out there. Williams got off to a rocky start
tonight so he was on the pine. Tom wasn’t hitting very well. They
were keying on him so we put in Danny. We have a war every day in
practice. It’s very competitive and I’m not afraid to go to the
bench."

The four-game win puts UCLA in first place of the Mountain
Pacific Sports Federation. As a result, the Bruins will most likely
be rewarded the top seed in the MPSF tournament and home court
advantage throughout the playoffs.

It didn’t look like UCLA was heading in the winning direction
after game one. Pepperdine jumped out to an 8-1 lead by letting the
Bruins make all the mistakes. During the run, UCLA had seven
hitting errors, six of which were easy points for the Waves.

The Bruins, however, came back and scored the next seven points
to even the score. Appropriately, kills by Moselle and Stillwell
started the run, but it wasn’t only the seniors. Freshman Mark
Williams had two kills and an ace while sophomore Evan Thatcher
pounded a ball after a spectacular dig by Taliaferro. UCLA killed
its own momentum though when it failed to hit consistently as
errors plagued the rest of the match.

Missed serves also hindered the cause, as UCLA was unable to
score despite consistently siding out. The Waves held the Bruins to
just one more point as it closed out the game.

It was an entirely different story in game two. The Bruins
started off with consecutive aces from Adam Naeve and mounted a
12-4 lead off of Pepperdine hitting errors. UCLA reached game point
after successive aces by Taliaferro.

The Waves didn’t go quietly as they rallied behind the hitting
of junior standout George Roumain who hammered six kills to keep
Pepperdine alive. But just as one of UCLA’s super sophomores
started the match with an ace, another one concluded the game with
an ace.

After winning a joust for the sideout, Taliaferro launched
another ace to help UCLA even the match.

In game three, the sophomores started the Bruins on a quick 7-0
run. An ace by Naeve was the first point, while Taliaferro had
three blocks for points while Thatcher thumped down three kills and
served an ace.

But Pepperdine answered back and brought the score to 8-6 with
its blocking. UCLA couldn’t find a hot hitter until Scates subbed
in Danny Farmer for Stillwell. Farmer sparked the Bruins
immediately with five kills and helped UCLA regain the momentum and
take a 2-1 lead in games.

UCLA continued to overwhelm Pepperdine in game four with tough
serving. The Bruins also effectively contained Pono Kahale, who had
subbed in for Peter Kodacsy early in the third game.

"That was the key," Scates said. "We didn’t stop George. George
still hit .350 and got a whole bunch of kills. We held George a
hundred points under his average. I figured if we could hold him 50
points under his average and just shut the other two guys down,
we’d be fine. We got one of them out and the guy that came in for
him wasn’t a very good hitter."

Pepperdine also replaced starting middle blocker Rick Tune in
game four but it didn’t make a difference. Poor passing kept the
Waves from running its offense in the middle.

"I thought that UCLA served real well," Pepperdine head coach
Marv Dunphy said. "It’s something that they’ve been doing all year.
We didn’t serve real tough. I thought that was the difference in
the match.

"I think that Taliaferro set the offense real well and got them
out of trouble. I didn’t feel that we put UCLA in trouble with our
serving at all and they put is in trouble quite a bit."

It may have been senior night but it was the sophomores who were
shining the brightest.GENEVEIVE LIANG/Daily Bruin

Brandon Taliaferro sets up Danny Farmer for a spike against
Pepperdine’s Rick Tune.