Eaters Chop Down the Cardinal - MPSF Regular Season Champs?

With the 'Eater sweep of Stanford, combined with the Pepperdine loss to BYU on Friday night, THE ANTEATERS ARE THE MPSF REGULAR SEASON CHAMPIONS!

No. 1 UC Irvine Hits .457 In 3-0 Victory Over Stanford
Hot-hitting, service aces and blocks help Anteaters sweep

April 17, 2009

Final Stats


Stanford, Calif. – No. 1 UC Irvine hit .457 and swept No. 4 Stanford (30-28, 30-24, 30-22) at Maples Pavilion Friday night.

The top-ranked Anteaters improve to 23-4 overall and 18-3 in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. Stanford goes to 20-10 on the year and 13-8 in league play.

Senior setter Ryan Ammerman directed a balanced Anteater attack with UCI posting a .457 (58-10-105) hitting percentage, the third best offensive attack this season. Ammerman not only dished 53 set assists, but recorded six blocks, three aces and four kills. Redshirt freshman Carson Clark had a double-double with 16 kills and 10 digs while hitting .481 (16-3-27) and firing three aces. Senior Taylor Wilson totaled 15 kills, hit .406 (15-2-32) and added six digs and four blocks. The reigning National Player of the Week, Jordan DuFault, continued his hot-hitting with a .611 mark against Stanford, recording 12 kills in 18 attempts with just one error. Freshman middle blocker Austin D’Amore totaled seven kills and six block assists, while libero Brent Asuka had a match-high 14 digs.

UCI held a 9-2 blocking advantage and fired seven aces to Stanford’s one. Stanford hit .277 (46-15-112) on the night.

Stanford was led by Evan Romero with 13 kills followed by Brad Lawson with 11. Setter Kawika Shoji tallied 39 set assists, five blocks and five kills. Erik Shoji matched Asuka with 14 digs.

In the first set, the Cardinal took a two-point cushion late in the match on an Anteater service and attack error to go ahead, 22-20. UCI responded with kills by Carson Clark and Taylor Wilson to knot the score at 22-22. With the score tied at 26 all, Nick Spittle came in and fired an ace that was followed by a Stanford attack error to give UCI the 28-26 advantage. The teams traded points until Jordan DuFault ended the set with a kill, 30-28. Wilson led UCI with five kills in the set, while Austin D’Amore hit .750 (3-0-4) and added four blocks. There were 19 ties in the first set.

UCI led 11-9 in the second set before a DuFault kill was followed by a pair of Clark aces to extend the Anteater lead to 14-9. Ammerman opened the UCI lead to 19-12 on back-to-back aces. Stanford could get no closer than four the rest of the match as the Anteaters won the set 30-24.

Stanford closed with 12-10 in the third set, before UCI went on a 3-0 run which included a kill by Clark and two from DuFault to take the 15-10 advantage. Wilson recorded three straight kills to push the advantage to 18-12. UCI hit a .500 (24-3-42) to take the third set 30-20. Both Wilson and Clark registered six kills in the final set.

The Anteaters will travel to Pacific tomorrow night (Apr. 18) to close out the regular season.