After top-ranked Long Beach fell to UC Irvine on Friday night in an unforeseen three-set loss, all eyes were on the No. 2 Bruins, and they did not disappoint.
Thanks to an impressive showing at the net, UCLA bested Pepperdine for the second time this week in an offense-driven feat, bringing home its 10th consecutive win – the longest streak in the MPSF. The scores for each set were 25-22, 25-22, 25-27 and 25-16.
The four-set effort was piloted by junior setter Andrew Rowan, who amassed 44 assists, three kills and 10 digs, surpassing both blue-and-gold liberos. His keen eye for reading the defense aided his arsenal of attackers in achieving a hitting percentage of .459, bettering the .418 they had earned in their previous matchup with the Waves.
Unsurprisingly, the pin hitters were key instruments in Rowan’s orchestrations. Redshirt junior outside hitter Cooper Robinson was once again the scoring leader with 18 points, and freshman outside hitter Sean Kelly ended the night with 12 kills and zero errors, an impressive feat that served to bolster the announcers’ praise of his “just about perfect” performance. Zach Rama, a junior outside hitter, rounded out the trio and accrued 14 kills of his own.
But equally dominant at the net were middle blockers junior Cameron Thorne and redshirt junior Matthew Edwards, who topped the charts for hitting percentage and blocking, respectively.
Thorne, a 2024 first-team All-American, tallied the highest hitting percentage of the night at .615 and contributed 10 kills and four blocks. The GCU transfer was also responsible for over half of the Bruins’ aces, supplying three of the total five.
Edwards slated first overall in total blocks, racking up seven – three more than any Pepperdine player. He cemented himself as a key figure in the game early on by teaming up with Rama for a double block against Pepperdine’s top scorer, freshman Cole Hartke, temporarily forcing their opponent’s hitting percentage into the negatives.
The striking success of the pin hitters and middle blockers was enough to compensate for the team’s defensive deficiencies in the face of Hartke’s prowess, and despite dropping the third set, the Bruins emerged victorious in the end.
With 22 service errors on the board, however, recurring concerns with the team-wide struggle at the service line come to mind. Thorne previously cited excessive service errors as one of the primary factors in the team’s losses to Long Beach, and the weakness still prevails amid an otherwise top-notch set of statistics. UCLA now has a little less than a week to remedy it before it faces the aforementioned middle blocker’s former school GCU in Arizona next Friday.
—
Featured Image Photographed by Lex Wang/Daily Bruin.
