The Pepperdine men’s volleyball team has a reason to celebrate— it was a solid week of important victories. The Waves had their best game of the season Friday beating top-ranked USC in a challenging five game match. The team followed up with another five game victory against UC Santa Barbara on Wednesday.
“We are confident with our position in the league senior outside hitter Brent Schirripa said. We are getting better as a team every day but we do not want to peak too early.”
In the first game against USC the Waves out-blocked out-hit and out-served the Trojans but in the second and third game USC doubled their hitting average making two set wins for them.
With a four-point lead 18-14 in the fourth game the Trojans thought that this would be an easy victory but the Waves never gave up.
In the fifth game Pepperdine stole the momentum with a four-point lead of their own. USC rallied with points of its own and brought the game to a 8-8 tie. The match ended with a kill from freshman opposite Maurice Torres.
A season high was set by Torres with 28 kills and right behind him junior Cory Riecks had 21 kills. The Waves were ecstatic with the win against USC.
“These matches will obviously be tests of how we are doing in this week said Schirripa, but we are looking at the big picture which is being the best at the end of the year.”
On Wednesday it was the same story for the men’s volleyball team as they battled the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos in a close match for the ninth straight time.
“They played well in the first two sets and we had a really slow start said senior libero Sean Grubbs. We kept control of the match starting in game 3 and we made the plays we needed to win in game 5.”
Senior outside hitter JD Schleppenbach had his first double-double of the season with 12 kills and 15 digs while junior setter Kasey Crider had 70 assists.
Throughout the match the Waves were ahead of UCSB in aces and blocks but the Gauchos stole the first game with a four-point scoring run.
The second game was also victorious for UCSB but couldn’t continue the momentum into the third set. Pepperdine won with a triple block by Schirripa senior middle blocker Rodnei Santos and Torres.
In the fourth set the Gauchos scored six points in a row to tie the game. Even though Pepperdine was outhit they still pulled through with the win needed to go into game five.
In the fifth game it was back-and-forth points on the scoreboard with kills from Schleppenbach and Torres and junior middle blocker Tyler Jaynes got match point off of a kill.
Next up for the Waves includes another battle against a top-ranked team. On Friday Feb. 5 at 7 p.m. the Waves travel to Cal State Northridge to take on the surging Matadors.
“Friday’s game will be intense against CSUN said Grubbs. They are ranked No. 1 this week but if we fight hard and compete as a team we have a good shot at winning.”
The bench players were the key to win.
“Every starter was in the double digits kills and each guy created opportunities for the next guy. I give credit to our bench Schleppenbach said.
