Pepperdine hands UCLA 4th straight loss
Watched the Waves-Bruins match tonight on Pac12 TV OC 232. guess it’s free until March 15 so OC subscribers cane watch a few more matches until then Including UCLA-SC Saturday at Pauley.
Waves won 25-18, 28-30, 25-23, 25-22. Waves had several set points in Set 2 but couldn’t finish. First time Pepperdine swept the season series with the Bruins since 2010.
Announcers were former Wave Kevin Barnett and Al Scates, trying hard not to say ‘we’ when talking about UCLA. not always successful.
they said Speraw was so unhappy with the practice attitude after the return from Hawaii that he kick the team out of the practice gym and took down the net himself. Kevin said word was a few of the net system pieces ended up in other places (as in maybe got thrown)
Page had an awful match but, because of injuries, they really had no one else to go to.
The loss helps UH since if the bruins fall into a tie with UH, the Warriors have the tiebreaker.
Saturday will be interesting because SC seems to be fading as well.
bottom line is Hawaii needs to win to control their destiny and not have to hope certain teams fall below them.
Barnett and Scates talked a lot about how tight the league race is and how one very good team will be left out with just 8 advancing. No. 9 will be out.
UCLA’s play of late doesn’t make me feel as good about UH’s sweep of them. I was hoping UCLA would continue to top the MPSF, oh well.
ucla is very injured right night and Speraw doesn’t believe in burning a redshirt year so late in the season. If I remember correctly, Scates had no problem doing that.
Last night, the Bruins had very limited options, down to 3 attackers really, down to two when Page had an off night. page 13-10-45, many of those kills late, many of them unforced errors when hitting wide or long. UCLA chose not to really challenge him with their block and Page didn’t adjust to challenge the block and go for tools. The Bruins hit negative in set 4 9-10-36.
As for the injuries, Fisher was out, as was Kerten, Paulin,, all of whom played in Hawaii. Smith is their 3rd setter, a pretty darn good one, good genes, dad is Singin (or Sinjin as he latter changed it to) Smith.
Broadcast said something about a player who was hurt in Hawaii landing on a ball in practice, not Rowe who was hurt during the game. The odd thing was that player didn’t make the trip to Hawaii last week. Perhaps he was injured during the Outrigger.
1. you should feel good about the sweep. UH played well enough to win both nights and were mentally strong in Set 5. UH still has the tiebreaker on the Bruins, the only team above them in the standings that you can say that about. so in some ways you want UCLA to continue to struggle in case that tiebreaker comes into play. but UCLA beating SC this weekend would help UH as the Trojans are really struggling right now. at 10-7. UH at 9-7. bottom line as i’ve said UH needs to win and keep the playoff destiny in their hands.
If uh wins their remaining matches, they can make the playoffs
they don’t have to win all in order to do so
True, but it would help. Better safe than sorry.
what’s disappointing to me is that with the core of players returning this year for this hawaii team, that the hope (for me, at least) was this team would be challenging in the top half of the mpsf … and not just fighting/struggling to get in the playoffs.
It’s a tough league, lost 2 5-setters. won 2 5-setters.
if you look at the standings not much separates teams tied for 3rd at 11-5 and teams tied for eight 9-7.
they beat the second-place team Long Beach at 12-4, which is only 1 1/2 games behind BYU at 13-2
still a lot of vb to play.
UCLA is weak in the back court. OH taking too much of the load and no one wants to dig. Pepperdine studied Hawai’i to win.
Thanks for the 2. comments, Cindy. I believe in this team – and stating the obvious, the MPSF is tough and very balanced. The w/l records confirm that.
The wait for the announcement of the transfer is killing me! Lol
I’m going with someone from UCLA because her major has to do with her love for whales,dolphins other sea creatures. 😉
11. Claire Felix?
11-12 I doubt it. UCLA sounds like an ideal place for a marine biology major.
Besides she sat on the bench for a bad UCLA team. She’s a good player I’m sure, but not something I would call big time.
All four matches on Warriors trip are streamed online. Fri-Sat at Stanford. Mon-Tues at Pacific.
Claire Felix. Freshman 2013 season, played 77 sets of 115, 134 kills, 1.74 per set, hitting .269 %, 0.47 blocks/set, 1.99 pts/set. Not a bench warmer, but not “big time”. Guess the correct word is “big” without the “time” being 6’6″. :>)