Bruins washed out by two straight losses

Published: Wednesday, October 1, 1997

Wednesday, October 1, 1997

Huskies, Cougars spike UCLA's hopes for victories; seasoned Cal, Stanford up next

By Jennifer Kollenborn

Daily Bruin Contributor

On a cloud-covered journey to the rainy state of Washington last weekend, the UCLA women's volleyball team managed to get caught out in the rain as they dampened their 5-2 record with two straight losses. The only grateful thought the Bruins flew home with was the hope of turning over a new leaf in their two home games against UC Berkeley and Stanford this weekend.

"We need to work on our attack and eliminate our errors," head coach Andy Banachowski said. "In the latter part of our games, we have been getting the kills, and we have been doing well in the conference as far as blocking, we are second, and we lead the conference in digs. So, we're doing a lot of good things; now, it's a matter of putting it all together. It's being able to get those kills at the right time, and not hurting ourselves by our own attack errors."

The Bruins' lack of offense combined with their attack errors against the University of Washington, resulting in UCLA's third recorded straight loss against the Huskies.

UCLA (1-2 in the Pacific 10, 5-3 overall) lost, 3-0, to Washington (3-0, 8-4) in three tough matches 16-14, 15-10, 18-16.

In a match that lasted one hour and 55 minutes, the Huskies outblocked UCLA .184 to .099.

"In the match, we were not able to convert a lot of point scoring opportunities for ourselves," Banachowski said. "We had some opportunities on Friday night to win the games and we let them slip away."

"(Washington) is a very strong blocking team. They have two of the quickest and best jumping middles in the conference, Makare Desilets and Leslie Tuiasosopo. With Tamika's knees being very sore, she was not able to move along the net.

"They ended up with a lot of double blocks against us when we were only able to get one player up at the net."

Also, senior outside hitter Kara Milling was out of sync in her play against Washington, only putting up 12 kills in 35 attempts for a meager .171.

"(Milling) did not have the type of night that she has been having," Banachowski said. "We should have given her a few more opportunities to get some kills, but we ended up setting our left side more - Celeste Peterson and Tanisha Larkin, who both notched 14 kills each. And I think that hurt (Milling) because usually even when she's down for awhile, she'll come back and get her kills, but she just needed a few more opportunities to get some swings."

No. 19 UCLA continued its losing streak on Saturday with a 3-1 loss to unranked Washington State.

The Cougars defeated the Bruins, 3-1, in front of a crowd of 2,635, lowering the Bruins' record to 5-4. The Cougars remained undefeated.

One factor that contributed to UCLA's disappointing loss was the loss of starting middle blocker Tamika Johnson.

"We had to put Tanisha Larkin in the middle because Tamika was hurting from Friday night's performance," Banachowski said. "Her knees were just too sore to allow her to play in another game which was back-to-back. But, we came out and played hard, and that's a good sign."

The Cougars outhit the Bruins .306 to .197 and outblocked them 13.5 to 11 in two hours and six minutes.

Although Washington State appeared to dominate the game in both attack and defense, each team racked up more than 10 service errors.

The intensity of the match was also reflected in the number of yellow cards awarded by the referee to both teams. UCLA suffered two yellow cards, one to No. 16 Kara Milling and one to the assistant coach. On the other side of the court, the head coach for Washington State picked one up.

UCLA's head coach also believes that the statistics were recorded incorrectly.

"I think our attack is better than what they are giving us credit for in (Washington State's stats)," Banachowski said. "We played a better match all the way through, so I was pleased with our effort. Washington State has a good experienced group, and they play very well together."

Looking ahead to this weekend, UCLA has two difficult matches against Berkeley and Stanford, who both have more experience than UCLA.

"We have a lot of youth out there on the court," Banachowski said. "We have some experience, and as the season progresses, we can get a lot better."

Daily Bruin file photo

Kara Milling during a game last year against Washington.

"We're doing a lot of good things; now, it's a matter of putting it all together."

Andy Banachowski

Women's volleyball coach