Bruins sharpen their away game for MPSFs
By Allison Ho
April 10, 2008 9:02 p.m.
Staring across the court and through the net, each member of the men’s volleyball team took his turn at the service line.
But it was no ordinary practice.
The coaches became hecklers, and every serve had to land in the court or the players would get an earful from volunteer assistant coach Walt Ker and the rest of the staff.
“The coaches were putting a lot of pressure, talking smack if you will, if you didn’t make (your serve),” middle blocker D.J. Stromath said. “It’s kind of like a game situation; it makes you mentally tough.”
And the No. 6 Bruins (16-12, 11-9 MPSF) will need to toughen up for their final two matches of the regular season this weekend against No. 12 Stanford (15-10, 10-10) and unranked Pacific (4-22, 1-19). In fact, the players know they will need to become “road warriors” if they want to survive this weekend and beyond, as they will be away from the friendly confines of Pauley Pavilion for the majority, if not all, of the upcoming MPSF playoff matches.
“We need to become really good at winning on the road,” senior libero Tony Ker said. “And this weekend will be a great chance to prove ourselves in that regard.”
With four uninterrupted days of practice this week, the Bruins have been laboring away in the SAC gym, perfecting their game and their mindset.
In their loss to Cal State Northridge, the Bruins took themselves out of the running with unforced hitting and serving errors. A big chunk of practice was dedicated to correcting these problem areas.
“I look at that CSUN night as an aberration because our serving was improving,” coach Al Scates said.
“We’ve been serving pretty good in practice too. But we’re working on it every day.”
With home-court advantage riding on both matches this weekend, Scates and the team aren’t taking any chances.
“We feel that everybody has the physical attributes to be a great serving team, but right now it’s all mental,” Ker said. “You just need to go back there with the idea in your head that you get to go back and score a point, not that you’re afraid to miss a serve.”
Locked up at 11-9 in the conference standings with Pepperdine, the Bruins must pull out two wins against Stanford and Pacific. The Waves are likely to sweep their season finale at Hawai’i, who is ninth in the league and is unlikely to reach the playoffs.
In its matchups with Pepperdine, UCLA went 2-0 and will own the tie-breaker should both teams end with identical conference records. The Bruins must win out to ensure a tie in the standings and secure home-court advantage for the MPSF quarterfinal match.
“It’s always an advantage to play at home,” Ker said. “I don’t really want to play at Pepperdine. The gym is really cold there, and it’s a lot smaller. We tend to do better in larger gyms.”
But not looking too far ahead to Pepperdine, the Bruins feast their eyes on Stanford and Pacific, and they are not going to let these two matches slip by so easily. Stromath and the team are adamant about keeping a stranglehold on winnable games.
“We’ve lost to some teams that weren’t ranked so high,” Stromath said. “Pacific is a team that’s not (ranked highly). We’ve got to come in with the mentality that we have to play hard even against teams that are weaker than us. So that will be the biggest challenge for us because we haven’t been able to do that this year.”
