The UCSD men’s volleyball team picked up its first win of the season against Princeton University Jan. 30 before falling to Mountain Pacific League foes UC Irvine and UCLA over the weekend.
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Princeton came to UCSD for the third of four matches on its current West Coast swing after dropping its first two matches in straight sets.
The Tigers fared no better against the Tritons, dropping the first game 30-21 due to strong serving and four aces by UCSD.
The second game was marred by sloppy play on both sides, but UCSD managed to out-hit Princeton .448 to .083 and cruised to a 30-18 victory. Despite an apparent lack of effort from the Tritons in the third game and a late rally by the Tigers, UCSD held on for a 32-30 win and the three-set sweep.
Jim Waller led the Tritons with a hitting percentage of .722 and 14 kills, while Chris Mortimer added 10 and Jordan Hove dished out 49 assists.
“”The Mountain Pacific is clearly the best conference in the country,”” Princeton coach Glenn Nelson said. “”UCSD has a lot of tough teams to come up against.””
The strength of the Mountain Pacific Conference was obvious after weekend visits from UCI and UCLA, both ranked in the top 10 in the nation.
Before the game, Triton head coach Ron Larsen addressed the difficulty in playing a team like Irvine.
“”[UCI] is a real good team with a lot of motion in their offense. They do a lot of the little things very well,”” he said. “”I want to see us come out there and compete hard and put some pressure on them and see what happens.””
The Anteaters opened the first game on a 5-0 run and never looked back, going on to a threegame sweep (30-22, 30-22, 30-16). The Tritons played badly throughout the match, passing poorly, hitting only .103 and committing eight service errors to only one ace.
The service errors killed several Triton rallies and disrupted any rhythm UCSD might have established.
Sophomore outside hitter Joe Griffin said the errors were “”mainly mental and a result of not being aggressive.””
UCI was plenty aggressive, hitting an impressive .443 as a team and ending with three players in double figures for kills. The team also earned a total of 13 aces on the night.
Anteater coach Charlie Brande was pleased with the match, which was even more impressive considering the absence of senior middle blocker Erick Helenihi, whom some consider the best hitter in the college game. Brande said the decision not to play Helenihi was due to inconsistency this year.
Going into their match with UCLA, the Tritons also had consistency issues. When asked if he thought his team could beat UCLA, Griffin said, “”Potentially. If everything goes right.””
Everything was going right in the first game Saturday night when the Tritons opened with incredible energy and built a 20-13 lead. But after a UCLA timeout, the Bruins went on a 5-1 run to close at 21-18. The game’s two stars then stepped up, and Waller recorded one of his match-high 18 kills on a set from Hove, who had 46 assists on the evening.
The Tritons closed out the first game 30-26, but the energy and solid hitting they brought to the first game were absent in the second. UCLA’s .478 hitting to UCSD’s .065 was more than enough to give the Bruins an seasy 30-21 victory.
In the last two games, the Bruins’ athleticism took over and they won, 30-23 and 30-17, to take the match. UCLA head coach Al Scates credited the turnaround to the substitution of Parker Smith, who was one of four Bruins with nine or more kills. But a clear size advantage at the net, which led to a 14-5 margin in blocks for the Bruins, was evidently also a key factor.
UCSD’s Waller joked after the game, “”If I was six-foot-eight, I could play like that, too.””
Nonetheless, Larsen was pleased with his team’s effort.
“”I thought we played really hard. There were lots of good things and after the first game they just took some things away from us and we couldn’t make the adjustments. Scates hasn’t won 28 national championships without learning how to make adjustments.””
The loss dropped the Tritons’ record to 1-7 overall and 0-6 in the Mountain Pacific Conference, marks they look to improve upon when they travel to the University of Hawaii Feb. 9 for a pair of matches.
