While most of the student body will be enjoying leftover turkey and mashed potatoes this coming holiday weekend, the UCLA women’s volleyball team will be hard at work.
The Bruin squad travels to Albuquerque, New Mexico to take part in the Albuturkey Tournament. The No. 21 Bruins (16-13, 9-9 Pac-10) will take on Rice (18-13) and Butler (14-18) on Friday before facing host New Mexico (8-20) on Saturday evening.
“We want to establish a rhythm,” said women’s volleyball head coach Andy Banachowski. “It will be a big confidence boost going into the NCAA tournament.”
The Bruins come into the tournament as heavy favorites in all three of their matches over the weekend, and will be looking to pad their win-loss record in order to improve their playoff seeding. The NCAA tournament brackets will be announced at 6 p.m., and while the Bruins will be in the field, they probably will not host a match.
With two freshman and four sophomores in the rotation, the Bruins are not the most playoff-tested bunch.
“It will be a new experience for some of these kids,” Banachowski said. “We’ll try to look at it as another match, but it’s do-or-die. That really intensifies everything.”
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UCLA’s Chrissie Zartman was named to the All Pac-10 team yesterday. The sophomore libero leads the Bruins averaging 4.48 digs per game. Senior Lauren Fendrick also earned honorable mention All Pac-10 honors, while Haley Jorgensborg was named to the Honorable Mention All-Freshman Team.