UCLA women’s volleyball looks to take on Fairfield at home in NCAA tournament

The Bruins are back in the dance.

For the third consecutive year, No. 13 seed UCLA women’s volleyball (23-5, 16-4 Pac-12) will be playing in the NCAA tournament. Its first-round opponent will be Fairfield (24-8, 16-2 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference).

Since the Bruins finished as a top-16 seed, their match against the Stags will be played in Pauley Pavilion, where the team is undefeated this season.

“We’ve been in season (for) nine of the last 11 months,” said coach Michael Sealy. “To not have to pack a bag the first weekend is huge.”

UCLA has a 10-0 record at home this season and has hit .326 – the best home splits in the Pac-12 – compared to swinging .243 in road matches and .271 at neutral sites.

Despite the familiarity of playing in Westwood, graduate student outside hitter/opposite Mac May said NCAA tournament play still presents novelty in its opponents.

“It’s exciting to go and play fresh teams that you might not know much about or might play a different style of volleyball,” May said. “It’d be interesting to see how our team reacts and continues to play our level of volleyball against those teams.”

Should the blue and gold advance past the first round, it would face the winner of the matchup between Pepperdine and UCF again at Pauley Pavilion.

In this single-elimination format, senior defensive specialist/libero Zoe Fleck said the increased stakes make it imperative that the team focuses on the tournament one round at a time.

“(It’s important to) really enjoy the journey and not look too far ahead to the future – just really focus on one foot in front of another,” Fleck said. “Sealy likes to say, ‘Chop wood and carry water one foot at a time and get to the next stage.’”

In the month of November, the Bruins averaged 2.04 aces per set, compared to 1.30 from August to October. May and senior outside hitter/opposite élan McCall are both ranked in the top five in aces per set during the Pac-12 season with 0.38.

May has recorded 17 aces in her last 11 sets, including tying a UCLA-record with eight-service aces in a sweep of Arizona on Nov. 21.

While McCall and May both posted three aces in the conference finale against USC, UCLA fell in five sets after leading 2-1. The Bruins gave up 14 aces and hit .184, their third-lowest mark this season.

“What we said in the locker room is that you don’t just get to win,” Sealy said. “We put ourselves in a good situation, but you need to execute. We got safe, we missed some assignments, we didn’t take care of the ball, we got loose enough to where you just don’t get to win those matches.”

Sealy said the lessons from the USC defeat can be applied towards the team’s approach in the tournament.

“The team that’s going to recover quicker from failure are the teams that are going to move on,” Sealy said.

Friday’s match begins at 7 p.m. If the Bruins win, the second-round contest will be held the following day, also at 7 p.m.