Victory over USC key to Pac-10 hopes

  KEITH ENRIQUEZ/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Outside hitter
Kristee Porter comes down hard on the ball in a
match at home this season.

By AJ Cadman
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Big teams show up for big games.

In the Pac-10 women’s volleyball race, tonight’s
battle, with No. 8 UCLA (16-5, 11-2 Pac-10) hosting No. 3 Southern
California (19-1, 12-1), is sure to be the biggest game of the
year.

It’s a match of two top 10 nationally ranked teams. They
have a crosstown rivalry with an animosity other teams across the
country can seldom match. And it happens in a Pac-10 race where
only one game separates the first-place Trojans and the
second-place Bruins in the standings.

For the Bruins, the thought of facing the Trojans on their home
court has one of the game’s brightest stars hungry with
anticipation.

“The emotion that runs through you when you even think
about “˜SC is tremendous,” UCLA outside hitter Kristee
Porter said. “Just hate ““ you just want to go out and
beat them.”

The Bruins fell to the women of Troy earlier this season, losing
to USC in four games 11-15, 11-15, 15-8, 11-15.

“We realize the opportunity they have to come to our
place,” UCLA head coach Andy Banachowski said. “When we
were over there, it was a tough environment for us to play with all
of their other athletes from other sports there. It gave us a lot
of grief.

“We would like to turn the tables on them.”

UCLA needs a victory over USC for a chance at the conference
title, but a victory alone over the Trojans won’t guarantee
anything.

Here’s why tonight’s matchup is so crucial: because
with the standings the way they are now, every game and every point
means something.

Assuming that UCLA wins the rest of its matches and assuming
that USC loses tonight and then wins the rest of its matches, the
two teams would have the same records at the end of the Pac-10
season), putting Bruins’ hopes for a Pac-10 championship on a
lot of outside factors.

If, at the end of the conference season, the two teams find they
are tied for first place, then a series of tiebreakers are used to
determine the true champion.

The first tiebreaker: number of games won in head-to-head
matchups. Tonight if the Bruins sweep in three games, then they
would win because they’ve taken more games in two matches
(four to three, since they lost in four games the last time the
teams met) and could claim the title. If the Bruins win in five
games, then they lose the title, because USC would have won more
games (five to four).

If the Bruins win in four games, however, it would tie the teams
because the number of games won by each would be four.

So then there would be another tiebreaker: actual points scored
in head-to-head matchups. Last time they played, the Trojans beat
the Bruins by a total of five points. Tonight when they play, if
the match goes four games, then UCLA must beat USC by at least six
points.

Simply put: the Bruins must win from now on, they must win well
tonight, and then just hope everything falls into place. For UCLA,
patience on attacks and consistent defense will be crucial.

“I thought we had been improving the past few weeks of
practice,” Banachowski said. “We hit over .300 in both
matches (last weekend at the Oregon schools). Right now, it’s
a matter of us getting ready on the same page and playing hard at
the start.”

Matches don’t get much more crucial for the Bruins than
the one that awaits them tonight.

For one senior, this marks possibly her final match against the
Trojans. That’s added incentive for her to help extend
UCLA’s current winning streak to seven matches.

“We are going to come out and play hard with a lot of
intensity,” senior middle blocker Elisabeth Bachman said.
“Deep down, there’s always that feeling when we play
USC to just kill them. Plus, we know that a lot is riding on this
game in terms of the goals we have set for ourselves.”