A challenging regular season can replicate postseason play.

And the Bruins are embracing their strenuous schedule.

No. 2 UCLA beach volleyball (21-4) bested No. 6 Cal Poly (21-5) 3-2 but lost to No. 1 Stanford (27-2) 3-2 Friday before sweeping its Saturday slate with a 3-2 victory against No. 4 USC (23-6) and a 5-0 triumph against No. 10 Long Beach State (18-10) at the Best in the West tournament in Laguna Beach, California.

“It’s going to be tough from here on out,” said coach Jenny Johnson Jordan. “Teams are better, so we expect tough matches every weekend. The interesting thing about our sport is that it could be a different team winning it for us every dual.”

The Bruins played each of their opponents at least once before the weekend competition, and the squad added to its unblemished season records against Cal Poly, USC and Long Beach State.

But the Cardinal trumped the Bruins’ potential to take the advantage in their season series.

Senior Maggie Boyd and sophomore Sally Perez, who went 4-0 on court one across their weekend outing, claimed the top court victory in three sets, but the court four pairing of junior Ava Williamson and redshirt junior Kenzie Brower fell in the game-clinching match.

UCLA has sustained two of its four losses against Stanford this season, and the Westwood bunch last lost to the Palo Alto, California, crew in its fourth game of the 2026 campaign.

Still, redshirt sophomore Taylor Ford said the team prioritized playing quality opponents over achieving an eye-popping record against weaker competition.

“We have the toughest schedule in the country, and we do that year-by-year, and it’s really good because it sets us up for the postseason,” Ford said. “We’ve played all the top teams many times. We know a lot of their tendencies.”

Ford played in just four matches ahead of the tournament.

Yet, she won both of her dual-match outings in Laguna Beach against Cal Poly and Long Beach State, respectively.

This included reuniting with redshirt sophomore Kaley Mathews on court three against the Beach.

The duo won the AAU National Championship when Mathews and Ford were in high school, and they were partnered together last year as well.

Ford said that she faced multiple people she knew from high school at the competition who cheered her and Mathews on.

“A lot of our girls we played growing up were coming up to us and saying, ‘I love this partnership,’” Ford said. “Even though we’re locked in on our own team, it’s such a great sport in that we’re all super close, and we can still cheer each other on and hope for the best for each other while also still competing.”

The Bruins responded on the tournament’s second day after going 1-1 on the first.

UCLA faced USC, a program that has boasted six – the most – national championships, to begin Saturday’s slate.

The affair was another tightly contested one, as the court-four matchup dictated the game’s outcome.

Sophomore Adelina Okazaki and freshman Mallory LaBreche lost 21-12 in the first set but clawed back with a second-set triumph and edged out the Trojan pair of Kyra Zaengle and Calinda Kok 15-13 in the third set to earn the Bruins their first court-four victory on the weekend.

Comeback victories against elite competition often require trust in the team and the training plan.

“The main thing that we did was trust each other and fall back on our training,” said redshirt sophomore Harper Cooper. “That’s all a credit to how hard we work in practice. We practice how we want to compete, and we constantly tell ourselves that, whatever the level of play we have in practice, that needs to be equal to – if not more than – how we want to play in the game.”

UCLA will continue its season next weekend at the Center of Effort Challenge in San Luis Obispo, California, against California, Cal Poly and Arizona State.

And Jordan said her team is excited for another challenging weekend ahead of the postseason.

“(We’re) looking forward to going into hostile territory and playing under that kind of pressure to help us better prepare for the playoffs,” Jordan said.