Published Sunday, April 29, 2007 12:09 AM PDT
Sports
UCI breaks Waves
Volleyball: Anteaters overcome 2-0 games deficit to capture MPSF tournament title.
By Barry Faulkner
MALIBU -- The UC Irvine men's volleyball team has stared elimination in the face in each of its last two matches. So, being down two games to none against No. 1-ranked Pepperdine in the Waves' gym Saturday night, turned out to be merely a temporary inconvenience.
But the Anteaters imposed the more permanent imposition of losing upon the Waves, rallying for a 27-30, 24-30, 30-28, 30-28, 16-14 victory in the championship match of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament, before 2,574 at Firestone Fieldhouse.
The win clinched a guaranteed berth in the four-team NCAA tournament that begins Thursday at Ohio State. It also gave UCI, which won the MPSF regular-season crown last year, but lost in the tournament semifinals, the program's first MPSF tournament title.
It's the No. 3-ranked Anteaters' second straight trip to the Final Four, though their victory Thursday over No. 2-ranked BYU, also a come-from-behind five-game affair, had all but locked up what most figured would be an at-large berth.
Now, Pepperdine (26-2), which had won 23 straight, will surely gain the at-large berth, joining UCI, Penn State and Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne in Columbus.
The Anteaters, who finished third in the MPSF regular-season standings, were 8-0 in elimination games in this year's MPSF tournament.
The string of comebacks began April 21 in the MSPF tournament quarterfinals, when UCI lost the first two games to visiting Hawaii at Crawford Court, but rallied to win.
UCI won the first game Thursday against BYU, but lost the next two to find itself on the brink of elimination.
Senior Matt Webber said that feeling, and the experience of overcoming it, once again crept into the players' huddle after losing the first two games against he Waves.
That feeling, however, soon had company in the person of Coach John Speraw.
"Speraw came in and said 'This is it. This is our last game, right here, so how are you going to handle it?' " Webber said. "As a senior, and there's four of us out here, we're going to take that personally, because we don't want our careers to be over yet. Are you kidding me? We're having way too much fun."
Speraw, who had commented on his team's difficulty winning five-game matches after the Hawaii win, said there is no magic formula his players have now discovered.
"I just think it was getting that first playoff win [against Hawaii]," Speraw said. "That five-game loss to Penn State in last year's [NCAA] semifinals just kind of hung on our players' minds. I think it weighed heavily on the program until 19-19 in the third game against Hawaii. We got over that hurdle and we just been rolling ever since. I hope we keep rolling next week, too."
Neither the Anteaters, nor the Waves allowed one another to get on much of a roll Saturday.
Pepperdine led by no more than three in the first game and claimed its first four-point lead in Game 2 at 21-17.
UCI managed its biggest lead in Game 3 at 15-11, though Pepperdine eventually pulled even at 24-24, then led, 25-24.
But three quick-set kills by David Smith, who totaled 12 kills in 13 attempts for an eye-popping .923 hitting percentage, produced UCI's final three points of the game to extend things.
UCI senior setter Brian Thornton amassed a career-high 78 assists, relying on Webber (25 kills), sophomore Taylor Wilson (a career-high 21 kills) and senior Jayson Jablonsky (20), as well as Smith and junior middle blocker Aaron Harrell (seven).
Thornton now has 4,552 career assists, surpassing Cory Hinkle (4,547) as the school's all-time leader.
UCI hit .370 as a team, while Pepperdine, paced by sophomore Paul Carroll's 18 kills, hit .301 as a team.
UCI earned a 12-10 edge in team blocks, but the Anteaters had 30 service errors and only two aces, while Pepperdine had just 11 service errors.
"I thought our team played hard and their team played hard," Pepperdine Coach Marv Dunphy said. "I thought we made a few more errors than we should have, but any talk like that takes away from Irvine. They made a few more plays than we did."
Pepperdine seized a 4-1 lead in Game 5, but UCI scored three straight to pull even.
The Waves were on top, 8-7, at the side change and UCI did not lead until Jablonsky put away a back-row kill that made it 14-13, UCI.
Pepperdine tied it again, but Jablonsky pounded another back-row kill and Pepperdine's J.D. Schleppenbach hit the ball long to allow UCI to celebrate. And celebrate they will, if only briefly.
"I'm just trying to get over it, because we have a big long week ahead of us," Webber said. "We don't need to dwell on it until after the season. For now, it's another win. We're going to see [the Waves] again, and they're going to be good again. But it was a big win. It was fun."
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