Thursday, February 27, 1997
M. VOLLEYBALL:
Nihipali has less-than-stellar performance in low-pressure game situationBy Vytas Mazeika
Daily Bruin Contributor
The word of the day is "quick."
First, The UCLA men's volleyball team defeated UC Irvine (UCI) in three "quick" games, 15-7, 15-6, 15-7.
Second, the Bruin stomping of the Anteaters was greatly due to the tremendous timing between true-freshman setter Brandon Taliaferro and the two "quick" hitters junior Tom Stillwell and true-freshman Adam Naeve.
And finally, UCLA (8-3, 7-2 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) got a lot of "quick" points by out-serving UCI (3-8, 2-6) nine service aces to one.
UCLA had a great night serving. The Bruins held a 2:1 service error to ace ratio. Naeve and Ben Moselle both accounted for three aces while Taliaferro served two. Fred Robins also had one.
Al Scates, UCLA's Coach, was very pleased with his team's hitting performance especially with Stillwell and Naeve, who hit for percentages of .778 and .765 respectively.
"The improvement was tremendous," Scates said. "We did not hit really well against Long Beach State on Friday. The quick hitters had a real problem connecting with the setter."
So Scates and assistant coach Brian Rofer decided that it was time to make some changes.
"Brian (Rofer) and I looked at a lot of game tapes over the weekend and identified some problems," Scates said. "We took the four top quick hitters and had them work with Brandon (Taliaferro) on Monday and Tuesday on a separate court with coach Rofer.
"And he got it back together. Now they know what to do."
"It is starting to come back," Stillwell said. "I would not say it is 100 percent there. It is not going to take one match for that to happen."
Paul Nihipali, UCLA's Player of the Year candidate, recorded only 11 kills and hit .350. Then again, in a night where UCLA outhit UCI .522 to .198 the Bruins did not need to rely on their go-to guy at all.
"It is hard for Paul (Nihipali) to play in this kind of game because he was not fired up tonight at all," Scates said. "I can see the difference.
"Paul does better in the pressure situations, in the big games."
Even though everything seemed perfect tonight for the Bruins, Scates and the rest of the team know that with upcoming matches against MPSF rivals Hawaii and Stanford there can be no letdown.
"We got into a little slump there," Stillwell said. "But I am glad (we head to deal with it) now rather than the finals or playoffs. Because if this is happening toward the end of the season it is bad news."
With UCLA's hitting coming around and Paul Nihipali getting fired up for a big game, the only team with bad news may be UCLA's Friday night opponent Hawaii.