The No. 10 Pepperdine men’s volleyball team beat the top-ranked team in the nation for the second time in eight days and looks to do so again this coming Friday.
The Waves went on the road and defeated No. 1 Cal State Northridge in four games (30-24 24-30 30-22 30-24).
“When we have our friends and classmates there we feel a sense of responsibility to deliver not only for us but for our school and what we represent senior setter Kyle Luongo said.
It was through defense that Pepperdine pulled through with a W” against CSUN.
Overall the Waves out-blocked Northridge with junior middle blocker Tyler Jaynes getting 11 blocking assists. Senior outside hitter JD Schleppenbach had a match high with 10 digs which also boosted Pepperdine’s defense.
The team was also very aggressive in the offense with kills from both junior Cory Riecks and freshman Maurice Torres.
Even though the match went to four games the Waves showed the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation some competition that the rest of the teams should look out for in the games coming up.
“We had a great crowd that traveled to CSUN to watch us play senior libero Sean Grubbs said. It was awesome beating the No. 1 team on the road in front of our fans.”
This Friday Pepperdine will again face USC now ranked No. 2 in a battle that gives the Trojans a home-court advantage.
“We know they are going to come after us pretty hard after our previous match this season Luongo said. However we still have plenty of work to do on our side so we are not coming into this match complacent. We know the task at hand and are preparing to continue getting better and seeing where that takes us as a team.”
Last year during the first round of playoffs for the championship the Waves slipped and ended up losing to USC.
“We still have not forgotten that USC knocked us out of the playoffs last year senior outside hitter Brent Schirripa said, and we always want to beat them badly.”
USC is Pepperdine’s number one rival and it always ends up being the most exciting games of the season.
“None of us want to beat a team more than we want to beat USC Schirripa said. We are playing pretty well right now and we hope that this will carry over to a victory on Friday.”
USC’s Galen Center is a huge gym that can fill up with a lot of Trojan fans but this Friday the stadium should rumble with the crashing sound of Waves as they bring spirit to USC.
“We take pride in taking care of business on the road Grubbs said. So we are looking forward to playing at the Galen Center on Friday.”
The Pepperdine Waves will travel to USC on Friday Feb. 12 to attack the Trojans in what will hopefully be the fourth consecutive win knocking out the top- ranked teams.
In the weeks following the Waves will need all the support they can get when they play Pacific Stanford Grand Canyon and Cal State Northridge in Malibu.
