UCLA falls to CSUN in four games

Unusually bad season may leave Bruins out of postseason play

Diamond Leung
Published: Monday, March 31, 2003

NORTHRIDGE – Over spring break, the UCLA men’s volleyball team broke down.

A 30-26, 27-30, 34-32, 30-25 loss to Cal State Northridge on Thursday left the Bruins in grave danger of missing the playoffs for the first time in school history. UCLA (13-12, 8-10 MPSF) currently sits one and a half matches out of the eighth and final spot in the conference tournament with four matches to go.

“It’s going badly,” UCLA head coach Al Scates said.

It was game three at the Matadome, a place UCLA where had not lost since 1991, which turned out to be the backbreaker for the Bruins. Late in the tight game, middle blocker Scott Morrow suffered a compound dislocation to his finger while blocking. The gruesome injury sent Morrow, the team’s best blocker, to a local hospital and will likely end the senior’s career.

UCLA went on to spoil a game point and save four others before junior opposite hitter J.T. Wenger, starting in place of freshman Matt McKinney, was whistled for mishandling a ball to give the game to CSUN (16-9, 11-8).

“No one call affects the outcome of the match,” said Wenger, who had 16 kills. “They played better than us, and we didn’t capitalize on their mistakes.”

A questionable call even went against UCLA on the opening play when junior middle blocker Chris Peña hit a ball that was called out partly because a line judge was missing. After that, seemingly every time the Bruins had a chance to gain momentum, their attacks found their way into the net or outside the lines.

“Great game plan, but we had trouble scoring points,” Scates said.

The Bruins couldn’t serve either, cranking out 20 service errors against only two aces.

CSUN, which completed a sweep of the two-match season series with UCLA for the time ever, out-hit the Bruins .356-.322 and out-blocked them 12.5-11. Joe Nargi hammered a match-high 25 kills for the Matadors.

The one bright spot for UCLA was the play of freshman outside hitter Saul Zemaitaitis, who replaced starter Jesse Debban and recorded career highs of 10 kills and 14 digs.

Sophomore outside hitter Jonathan Acosta led the Bruins with 18 kills, and Peña added 17.

Peña, however, was blocked on match point and agitatedly yanked at the net.

“Frustration is definitely there because we’re a team that is capable of playing so much better,” said an emotional Peña. “We can still weasel our way into the playoffs. Don’t count us out yet.”