The Stanford men’s volleyball team embarks on yet another MPSF road trip this weekend through Southern California, this time to face UC-Irvine and UC-San Diego in a two-game series that begins Friday night in Irvine.
The Cardinal (13-4, 9-4 MPSF) moved up a spot, to No. 3, in the American Volleyball Coaches Association rankings with their third straight win last weekend, a five-set thriller over then-No. 3 UC-Santa Barbara. It also marked Stanford’s third three-game winning streak of the season.
If Stanford is to build on its recent momentum, it can’t afford a letdown against the Anteaters on the road. The last time the Cardinal had a three-game win streak, it was swept in a shocking home loss to UC-San Diego in mid-February.
“We finally got our 2-0 weekend, I’m really happy with the way we played and battled against a good [Santa Barbara] team,” said head coach John Kosty. “I don’t think we’ll have a problem getting ready for the [Irvine] game.”
Irvine gave the Cardinal just about all it could handle in the last meeting between the teams on Feb. 12. Stanford took the first set, hitting a robust .419 as a team with just three attack errors, but saw its offense stall in the second and third sets, hitting just .182 and .061 as a team.
Junior outside hitter Brad Lawson shouldered much of the load, as the Cardinal roared back and took the fourth set to extend the match with a game-high 23 kills and just four errors for a .442 hitting percentage. Senior outside hitter Spencer McLachlin rebounded from his struggles early in the match to notch 13 kills across the fourth and fifth sets while hitting .550.
The match against the Anteaters has plenty of postseason implications, as No. 7 Irvine is just one game back of Stanford in the loss column at 7-5. The Cardinal is currently third, half a game behind BYU and two games back of conference-leading USC with nine MPSF matches remaining.
The first round of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Tournament begins on April 23, and the Cardinal seems almost assured of a spot in the tournament as one of the top eight finishers in conference play.
It’s hard to imagine that the Cardinal would repeat its last performance against the Toreros, when the team hit .182 with 23 attack errors on just 99 swings in the 3-0 loss. There weren’t many bright spots, even though freshman outside hitter Brian Cook did tally 12 kills and McLachlin had 11.
Normally reliable junior libero Erik Shoji was also off his game, with just three digs to his name, well below his season average of 2.31 digs per set, the ninth-best average in the country.
After this weekend’s matches, Stanford will have a mandatory two-week layoff for Dead Week and finals, before resuming play on Saturday, March 19 in a non-conference match against California Baptist at Burnham Pavilion.
The Cardinal will be hard-pressed to get back into the swing of things before jumping right back into MPSF play against Cal State Northridge and Long Beach State at home the next weekend.
Stanford kicks off the weekend against the UC-Irvine Anteaters at Crawford Hall at 7 p.m. Friday night.