Against Pacific, the set scores were 25-19, 31-29 and 25-19. Neither team had a great night, but with the Tigers hitting at .268 and the Tritons at .155, and a difference of 10.5 to 5.0 blocks in favor of Pacific, the game ended quickly.

Despite a one-point lead in the first set at 15-14, the Tritons were smashed by a five-point run from the Tigers and could not recover the lead. Game two stayed close with Tritons forcing extra points to be played, but Pacific pulled out a series of kills that won the game for them.

“We played a much better game two, we were up 18-14, 20-15, and you have to win that,” head coach Kevin Ring said.  “And we just did not close; we didn’t communicate well on court. We finished with some attack errors, which were costly.”

The Tigers took a 16-8 lead in the third set and did not look back.

“We played deflated in game three, after losing [set two],” Ring said. “Which was disappointing because that’s a position we put ourselves in, down two games to zero that we felt should have been tied 1-1. We had to come out and give a better effort out there in game three. But it was a bad night; it wasn’t our night. They played really well and got better as the match went on, and we did not match that.”

Stanford took on UCSD with a record crown of 1,012 spectators at RIMAC Arena. The set scores were 25-22, 22-25, 25-21 and 25-17. The Tritons played a better game than the previous night, hitting at .272, but could not match up to the .369 hitting percentage from the Cardinals.

“We came out for game three and got off to a really slow start,” Ring said. “They’re jump-float servers, and they’re not going to miss, so we’ve got to earn those sideouts.”

The Tritons fell behind early in game four, and didn’t threaten to force a game five.

“Game four, we came out and kind of back down a little bit,” Ring said. “Mid-to-late in that game we had attack errors, service errors. And that’s on us. We missed some serves and attacks late in that game that really opened it up for Stanford.”

Sophomore outside hitter Carl Eberts led the Tritons with 15 kills and a .429 attack percentage. Sophomore libero Chase Frishman collected a match-high 14 digs. Senior outside hitter Joel Davidson saw 11 kills and junior opposite Shane Veiga got 10.

The two losses bring the Tritons to 6-14 overall and 3-11 in MPSF matches.

The Tritons hit the road this weekend for matches against No. 1 USC and No. 9 Pepperdine.

Readers can contact Hanna Rahimi at [email protected].