GREG BARNETT
Sports Editor
Head Coach Marv Dunphy says the goal of his No.-2 Pepperdine men’s volleyball team at the beginning of every season is to win the national championship.
The Waves almost achieved that goal last season before losing in the national semifinals to Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
This year the team is relying on a combination of young talent and veteran leadership to guide them to the championship.
The team is starting fresh with four new starters, while also bringing to the court returning stars junior Paul Carroll and reigning national Player of the Year Jonathan Winder.
“The goal is always to compete for a national championship, and so we have standards for everything that we do,” Dunphy said. “Our goal is to meet those standards and then everything will fall into place. You start with the end in mind and work back from there.”
The team continued its impressive start to the 2008 season with a 3-0 sweep of No.-8 California State University at Northridge on Saturday afternoon at Firestone Fieldhouse.
The Waves started their season just three days before with a win over UCSB in four games at home. Dunphy said despite some of the new starters’ inexperience, the team has played well.
“There’s going to be some growing pains,” he said. “We’re starting four new guys and things haven’t been perfect so far, but we’ve been good enough to beat two good teams.”
Junior J.D. Schleppenbach said the team played well enough to beat UCSB on Wednesday, but played much better against Northridge.
“We felt coming off our first match against UCSB that we had some new guys and it was good getting through that one,” Schleppenbach said. “Then coming back here it felt a lot better, passing was good, everyone played well. It felt good to get it done in three.”
Carroll led the Waves in Saturday’s match, hitting .433 on 30 attempts with 17 kills and also added a team-best six block assists. Winder aided in the victory by providing 27 assists, 6 digs and 3 kills for the Waves.
Pepperdine hit .361 as a team and posted only 10 errors while the Matadors hit .253 and committed 20 errors.
The Waves got off to a fast start, building an early 9-4 lead in game one and keeping the lead to no less than four points for the entire game before pulling away with a 30-22 victory. The team hit an impressive .571 in the first game, while Northridge was held to a .206 hitting percentage.
The Matadors came back strong in game two, building a 14-9 lead and maintaining the lead until the score reached 22-17. Pepperdine rallied to finish the game on a 13-5 run to win the game, 30-27.
The Waves kept the momentum in the third game, leading throughout to close out the match with a 30-22 win in game three.
“We were error-free for the most part and we blocked well,” junior Mark Hulse said. “They just made a lot more errors than we did.”
The team travels to Northern California this weekend to play back-to-back matches Friday and Saturday against Pacific and Stanford, respectively.
“We just need to avoid errors, play smart, and serve in,” Hulse said. “It’s all about who doesn’t make the most errors early in the season.”
01-17-2008
