The week that was in men’s volleyball

Seems like the post I did last week was pretty well-received, so let’s go for another.

As mentioned previously, #1 BYU were idle this past week. Their next match is Friday the 1st against Long Beach State, followed by a Saturday match with CSU Northridge. Then next week, they’re still at home, for a Thursday/Saturday against UCSB and UCLA. Not until the day after Valentine’s Day, when they hoof it over to Pepperdine, will the Cougars play a road match. Six weeks and ten straight matches at home. It’s cushy — but you’ve gotta wonder if they’re missing out at all on being tested away from their friendly confines. There’s no question they’ll remain the #1 team in the country in tomorrow’s poll, and probably in next week’s and the week after, unless one of their upcoming opponents can turn an upset in what’s revered as one of the hardest places to play in the country. But after that I think they could be ripe for a letdown at any time.

It was a very rough week for the previously #2 ranked Pepperdine Waves. As I covered, flimsily, they lost an entertaining five-set match to Hawaii Friday night. I knew they had a return engagement tonight, and silly me, I thought it was at the same time. It wasn’t — it started two hours earlier (ironically, it would have been a great start time for me, if only I’d known that was the start time). The match was nearly over when I first tuned in and just concluded, with Hawaii taking a (25-21, 25-22, 25-16) sweep. The third set was not even as competitive as the 25-16 score (which is not a competitive score) would have you believe. The Warriors had Aloha Ball at 24-12, and only a run on serve from Matt West, probably Pepperdine’s best server, got the margin in single digits.

This is Hawaii serving notice — they’re not just about effort and potential and good performances anymore. They’re capable of getting winning results against the best teams in the nation. And that’s something I would not have said a week ago. The catalyst is most certainly Brook Sedore, who has been one of the team’s best servers but really has nicely seized a starting role upon being given the opportunity. Sedore had 17 kills in the five-set win on Friday night — a very nice total, especially when it came on a .419 attack percentage. But tonight, in a three-set sweep, he had another 15. His attack percentage actually dipped a little, to .393, but still, that’s clownshoes. I expect he’ll be named MPSF Player of the Week, and I have little doubt that he’s permanently displaced Jace Olsen as the starter at outside. At least until he gives Hawaii coach Charlie Wade a reason to think otherwise.

I also think Hawaii will be ranked in tomorrow’s poll. Pulling out a gutty win against the #2 team in America Friday night, and then just demolishing them tonight…well, if their one win over UCLA had them receiving votes, these two results should have them receiving lots of votes. It’s kind of remarkable that they got such a strong result when they got almost no production out of their middles. Taylor Averril and Davis Holt were errorless on Friday, but combined to hit zero tonight at 4/4/12. Hawaii got excellent production from the pin hitters, especially considering there was really no reason for the defense not to cheat to them a little.

In the zero-sum game that is the national rankings, Hawaii’s gain is probably going to be UC San Diego’s loss. The feel-good story of the early season, and current holders of what I believe is the highest rank in school history, the Tritons came down to Earth a little bit this week, losing to CSU Northridge and to Long Beach State, taking just one set in the process. The especially gruesome part is both of these were home matches. They were actually more competitive than the set scores indicate, as the Northridge match, a 3-0 sweep for the Matadors, featured 32 ties and 13 lead changes, and the Long Beach State match 22 and 8. Still, the Tritons come away with two losses, sending them to 2-4 in league play.

Which, bizarrely enough, still puts them in spitting distance of defending national champions UC Irvine. The Anteaters have probably been coasting a bit on the laurels of the 2012 national crown and the name value that affords to have been #3 coming into this week. With Pepperdine getting thumped by Hawaii, UCI will be #2 tomorrow, after wins over wins over CSU Northridge and over Long Beach State. The win over Northridge was UCI’s stronger performance of the week, being a 4-setter to the 5 sets needed to triumph against the 49ers, and the one set the Matadors took was a hardly-dominant 25-23 first. The Long Beach State match reads very interestingly on the stat sheet. The Anteaters came back from down 2-1 to win, and after three it must have looked like they were going down in flames. They were just barely positive in the 3rd, at 11/9/30. They rebounded with a super-strong 4th, but actually managed to hit worse in the 5th than they did in the 3rd, at 7/6/17 (the percentages being .067 to .059). Somehow that was still good enough to pull out a 15-13 decider, as their serving was markedly the better of Long Beach State’s in the 5th.

Stanford and UCLA were tied for fourth in last week’s poll, and Stanford will move ahead of their Pac-12 foes this week. Fairly simple call as to why, as the Cardinal defeated the Bruins in four sets Tuesday night. They followed that performance up with a dominant three-set sweep of UCSB on Saturday night. Stanford of course being the team who got their lunch handed to them by USC (whom UC San Diego have beaten) and Pepperdine (whom Hawaii just destroyed) the week prior. Do NOT try to make sense of this. Not if you value your wits, anyway. As for the Bruins, they rebounded from the Stanford loss quite nicely, defeating University of the Pacific in their first three-set sweep of the season.

Last week’s sixth-ranked team was Penn State. The Nittany Lions kicked off their conference schedule this week. They dispatched Sacred Heart with little trouble, taking a three-set sweep where only the 3rd was at all competitive. Their Saturday match with Harvard was a lot more competitive — or at least the first four sets were. After the combined score of the first four sets favored PSU by only a single point, they smashed the decider by a 15-6 count. It was a defensively-minded match to say the least, as both sides hit under .100 and the best attack percentage in a set for either team was Harvard’s .267 second. The Crimson were an eye-poppingly bad 1/5/11 in the fifth, making me wonder if they perhaps simply ran out of gas. It’s still relatively early in the season for them — this was just their fourth match. They managed an impressive 17.5 total team blocks, and it bears mentioning that this was a home match for the Nittany Lions. The return engagement on the Crimson’s home court — February 15 — should be interesting.

Along with BYU, #8 USC were also idle this week, at least in terms of official matches (they had their alumni match Saturday night). Eleventh-ranked Ohio State got their MIVA season off on the right foot, taking six straight sets against Lindenwood between Saturday and Sunday nights. #13 Cal Baptist also had the week off. Lastly, bottom-ranked Lewis took the next and best steps toward ensuring that they continue to have a number next to their name. They won two matches over EIVA foes, with a three-set sweep of NJIT Friday night and a five-set squeaker against George Mason on Saturday. Depending a bit on how highly valued Hawaii’s week is, they ought to climb a few ranks tomorrow.