UCLA
Stanford
Volleyball Clinches Playoff Spot in Win at Stanford
April 18, 2015 | Men's Volleyball
The No. 12-ranked men's volleyball team clinched the No. 8 seed in next week's MPSF Playoffs with a straight set win at 14th-ranked Stanford on Friday night. Scores of the contest were 25-18, 25-19, 25-20. UCLA is now 13-13 overall and 9-13 in MPSF action. The Bruins will play at the MPSF's top seed, either Hawai'i or UC Irvine, when playoff action starts on April 25.
UCLA's possible playoff opponents each play tomorrow, Hawai'i is at BYU and UC Irvine hosts UC San Diego. UH and UCI enter Saturday's matches with identical 18-3 MPSF records. The Anteaters own the tiebreaker.
The Bruins hit at least .380 as a team for the third straight match and over .400 for the second straight contest after swinging to a .430 clip at Stanford. J.T. Hatch led the way with 16 kills and a .444 hitting percentage. Jake Arnitz added 12 kills, an ace and six digs while hitting .429. Trent Kersten totaled eight kills, four block assists and hit .800. Eric Matheis handed out 45 set assists and had a block solo and three block assists. Christian Hessenauer made seven kills. Mitch Stahl had five kills and four block assists. Jackson Bantle dug five balls.
UCLA jumped out to a 5-3 lead in set one. Stanford evened the score at 5-each. The Bruins led 10-7 after an Arnitz kill and 13-9 after an Arnitz ace. A Hatch kill forced a Cardinal timeout with UCLA in charge 15-11. The Cardinal scored the next two points, but a service error and a Hatch kill pushed the UCLA advantage to 17-13. Back-to-back kills by Hessenauer opened the gap to 20-15. UCLA ended the set, in which it hit .484, at 25-18 on another Hessenauer kill.
A bunch of Stanford errors left UCLA in front 4-1 to open set two. Stanford closed to 7-5, but UCLA anwered and a Hatch kill made it 10-6. Two straight Hatch kills pushed UCLA into a 16-11 lead and the Bruins opened it up to 20-12 after a Stanford attack error. Four straight Cardinal points made things interesting at 20-16, but UCLA went on the take a 25-19 decision on a Kersten kill.
UCLA opened up a 5-2 advantage at the start of set three. The Cardinal came back to make it 7-5 and 14-13. Back-to-back kills by Hessenauer moved UCLA out to a 16-13 edge and Stanford never got closer than two points the rest of the way. Stahl's fifth kill ended the set and match at 25-20 and advanced UCLA to the MPSF Playoffs.
MPSF Standings
Hawaii 18-3
UC Irvine 18-3
Pepperdine 17-5
USC 14-7
BYU 13-8
UCSB 12-9
Long Beach 10-11
UCLA 9-13
CSUN 7-14
Stanford 7-14
Cal Baptist 2-19
UC San Diego 0-21
Friday Result: BYU 3, Hawaii 1
Saturday MPSF Matches: Hawaii at BYU, UC San Diego at UC Irvine, UCSB at Stanford, Cal Baptist at USC, CSUN at Long Beach State
