The Stanford men’s volleyball team showed its depth Wednesday night, sweeping the UC-Santa Cruz Banana Slugs in a dominant 30-19, 30-27, 30-14 victory.
The Cardinal used its deep bench by starting junior libero Jordan Inafuku, junior middle blocker Max Halvorson and redshirt sophomore middle blocker Charley Henrikson for the first time all season in the non-conference match. On the statistical side, 10 different Cardinal players recorded kills, but only one, sophomore outside hitter Brad Lawson, was in double digits, with 11. However, junior outside hitter Ian Connolly matched his collegiate career high with seven kills and sophomore Dylan Kordic also recorded a career high with two kills.
“I think tonight’s win was definitely a team win,” said freshman Jake Kneller. “We had a lot of guys contribute who usually do not get much playing time, and it just keeps us motivated to keep working hard in practice when we get the chance to play in a game…[Head coach John] Kosty told us to make sure to focus on serving, passing and working hard in transition, which I think we executed well.”
Kneller made the most of his playing time, serving 10 straight points from 14-8 to 24-8 in the third set. This run included four aces and sealed the win for the Card in the deciding set. Other players had big nights in some of their first action of the season. Inafuku had 13 digs, Henrikson hit .500 with five kills and Halvorson also got in on the action, contributing three blocks. As a team, the Cardinal excelled from behind the service line with 13 aces as compared to only nine service errors.
“I think we did a great job of serving tough and keeping our serves in,” Halvorson said. “Our side-out game has been pretty consistent. So when our serving is on, we’re able to go on multiple scoring runs like we did to come back in the second game.”
“Our main goal was to be efficient tonight, to win convincingly with a high side-out percentage and disciplined defense and hitting,” added sophomore Jake Vandermeer. “I thought we accomplished this goal, especially with our serving and the effectiveness of our attack.”
Next, the Cardinal faces Pacific on Friday in Stockton for an important Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) matchup.
“Every conference game is huge for us,” Inafuku said. “Our conference is extremely close. We’re one game away from being on top of the conference. And one game away from being ninth, so that really puts great importance on every match.”
In Pacific, the Cardinal has an opponent that is very dangerous, even though it has not won a MPSF conference match all year. Just last week, the Tigers barely lost to USC, and only did so by blowing a two-set lead and falling in a grueling five-setter.
The Cardinal understands this, and although the team has not been game-planning specifically for Pacific, it has been working extremely hard this week in practice.
“We’ve just been concerned with making sure our game continues to improve,” Inafuku said. “We’ve been working hard defensively, trying to get ourselves into good positions to get one more ball up so our offense has another chance to score.”
As the Cardinal reaches the halfway point of the season, the team is happy with its success so far and is looking forward to more in the future.
“I think aside from our two-loss weekend versus Santa Barbara and Northridge, we’ve played a lot of very solid matches,” Halvorson said. “The MPSF has so many good teams this year, so any team can come out and beat pretty much any team on a give night. All in all, we’re in a good position to win the MPSF regular season…and we haven’t peaked yet, so it’s really exciting to think about how good this team can be.”
First serve will be at 7 p.m. in Stockton, Calif.