UCLA men’s volleyball to play Tritons, looks to maintain perfect away record

This post was updated Jan. 22 at 12:18 p.m.

After starting the season out east, the Bruins will play on the West Coast for the first time this year.

No. 3 UCLA men’s volleyball (3-0) will face UC San Diego (2-1) at the Rimac Arena in La Jolla, California.

UCLA is fresh off a five-set victory over Princeton, and coach John Speraw said freshman outside hitter/opposite Cole Ketrzynski was a major part of the team’s success that match and will continue to be integral moving forward.

“He was outstanding,” Speraw said. “I think we’ve been searching to figure out who will be the opposite on this team and who can step up and be that point scorer for us.”

Ketrzynski had only played two sets before last Friday’s game, but he proceeded to play in every set against Princeton and put up a game-high 17 kills. Redshirt senior middle blocker Matt Younggren said that playing longer matches helps the more inexperienced players like Ketrzynski gain valuable high pressure experience early on in the season.

“Playing five-setters is always big if you can get those in, because it’s hard to replicate a fifth-set win in practice, so playing five-setters in real games is huge,” Younggren said.

Ketrzynski put up 12 kills in the first two sets of the match but the final set belonged to senior middle blocker Daenan Gyimah.

The Bruins have won all three games they’ve played so far away from Pauley Pavilion. This success on the road wasn’t the case for the Bruins last season, where they were 7-7 on the road.

“I think it was a great trip for morale,” Speraw said. “Just to go on the road and all be together to start the season, not have to worry about school and focus on volleyball. It was almost like a team retreat to start the season. To finish it with a win was obviously a nice cap to the experience.”

The Bruins remain undefeated this season, but they have earned that perfect record despite a barrage of service errors.

The Bruins currently average 7.4 service errors per set. UCLA could have closed out the game against Princeton in the third set but a string of service errors stopped it.

“There’s a lot of things we need to get better at, serving just so happens to be one of them and I think we’ve had a really nice week of practice,” Speraw said. “I think part of the issue is that we jumped into this season without any training. To have some aspects of our game not be very clean at this point, particularly with a lot of young guys on the court, is not surprising, but I think we’ll continue to improve.”

The Bruins will face a Triton team with a home-court advantage coming off a win against Vassar College. In last year’s encounter with UCSD, UCLA took the match in four sets, with Gyimah leading the way with 10 kills, three aces and five blocks.