The scoreboard showed that the UCLA men’s volleyball team beat Cal State Northridge 3-0, but the match itself was no blowout. In their showdown at the Matadome on Wednesday, the Bruins and the Matadors battled out three sets in which neither team could shake off the other, and victory was determined by the last few plays.
Through the first two sets, points might as well have been assigned by a coin flip. No. 8 UCLA (10-9, 5-8 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) held slim leads and traded points with the Matadors (4-13, 3-9) early on. The Bruins enjoyed their newly found hitting prowess to the dismay of Northridge’s defense; they hit .444 in the first set and .375 for the match.
Redshirt senior opposite Tanner Nua and the Matadors tied the first set at 24 apiece, but the Bruins scored the last two points to win 26-24. Nua was UCLA’s main concern coming into the match, and after the first set the team was able to effectively deal with him to the point where he had to sit out.
“If you stuff a guy a few times, pretty soon they start trying harder shots, and they pick up some errors,” coach Al Scates said.
The second set was more of the same. Led by junior setter Kyle Caldwell’s 11 kills and junior quick hitter Nick Vogel, who recorded eight kills and five block assists, UCLA held off CSUN to win 27-25 on a kill by redshirt junior Alex Scattareggia after the Matadors forced another 24-24 tie.
Scattareggia’s superior ball distribution throughout the match had CSUN continuously guessing and helped UCLA come out of some tight situations.
The Matadors came out hard in the third set, wasting no time in building a 9-3 lead that forced the Bruins to call a timeout.
“We just said that we need to buckle down and stop letting them walk all over us,” Vogel said. “We know that we can play better than the team that we’re across the net from, so we just had to clear our heads.”
Scates substituted in redshirt freshman outside hitter Matt Hanley, whose service game helped the Bruins reduce the deficit to two points.
“(Hanley) served five or six in a row and got us back in the game,” senior libero Tom Hastings said. “That energy was confidence-boosting, and it allowed us to close it out in three (sets).”
An ace by Hanley tied the set at 16-16. With the Matadors hard on their heels, the Bruins took the third two-point swing 25-23 and won an extremely close sweep.
If junior quick hitter Thomas Amberg had not been injured, the match might not have been as close. Amberg fractured his finger Feb. 22, but the injury was misdiagnosed as a dislocation and not correctly identified until Wednesday.
Scates plans to use Amberg in Friday’s match against Long Beach State as long as his hand can be protected. The match will begin a four-match home stand for UCLA. Both of the previous two matches between the Bruins and the 49ers this year resulted in five-set thrillers, so the team plans on another night that will go down to the wire.