UCLA
Penn State
Bruins Hold Off Penn State 3-2 in Thrilling Five-Set Match
March 09, 2011 | Men's Volleyball
March 9, 2011
Los Angeles -
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The 8th ranked UCLA men's volleyball team defeated the Penn State Nittany Lions 3-2 in an absolutely wild five-set match.
The Bruins improved to 12-9 on the year while the Nittany Lions dropped to 14-4. Game scores were 25-23, 24-26, 25-20, 22-25 and 19-17.
The match went back-and-forth all night as the two sides traded sets to begin the match. The Bruins would then take the 3rd set 25-20 before the Nittany Lions fought back and won the 4th set 25-22. In the final set, UCLA got off to a fast start and jumped ahead 7-4. But Penn State surged back and went ahead 8-7, eventually pushing their lead up to 14-13. With their backs against the wall, junior Thomas Amberg came up big and hammered home a kill to notch the score up at 14-14. The Bruins would face another match point at 16-15, but junior Kyle Caldwell brought UCLA back again with a kill to tie the score at 16-16. Eventually the two teams would become deadlocked at 17-17 before Gonzalo Quiroga put the Bruins up 18-17 with a kill. Then Caldwell ended the match with his 16th and final kill of the night after Amberg put in a hard serve that Penn State was forced to hit back over to Caldwell.
Amberg and Caldwell led the Bruins in the victory with 16 kills apiece and contributed 18.5 and 17.5 points respectively. Quiroga was right behind them with 15 kills while also contributing 2 total blocks, good for a team-high 19.0 points on the night. Junior Weston Dunlap had a great performance as well, pounding 14 kills and leading the team with 3.5 total blocks as he had 17.5 points against Penn State. In addition, two other Bruins stepped up, as freshman Matt Hanley recorded 8 kills in the win in place of the injured Jeremy Casebeer while setter Connor Bannan contributed a game-high 57 assists in the victory.
Overall, the Bruins hit .319 as a team while holding the Nittany Lions to just .234. Joe Sunder led Penn State with 22 kills.
UCLA's next match will be Friday, March 11th, against the Loyola-Chicago Ramblers at 7:00 p.m in Pauley Pavilion. Fans at home can follow the match live on gametracker or listen to a live audio broadcast on uclabruins.com.
