National Invitational Volleyball Tournament : UCLA Has Revenge on Its Mind, Wins Easily

Spurred on by the bitter memories of last spring, the UCLA women’s volleyball team beat the team that sent them home early from the NCAA tournament last season, and, in so doing, advanced Friday night to the semifinals of the National Invitational Volleyball Tournament.

The Bruins (13-3) ran on emotion and intensity in beating Loyola Marymount, 15-7, 15-9, 15-3, in front of about 1,000 in Pauley Pavilion.

After a week of rehashing last season’s disappointment, there wasn’t a UCLA player who remained unschooled regarding the details of Loyola Marymount’s upset win in the first round of the national tournament. It was the earliest the Bruins had ever been eliminated, and it is still considered one of women’s volleyball’s greatest upsets.

UCLA Coach Andy Banachowski said he didn’t make an inspirational Gipper-like speech before the match. His players met in private and took care if it themselves.

“Revenge, that was the word,” team captain Lori Zeno said, remembering the players’ meeting. “It wasn’t kept quiet, it was explained to the freshmen. It was out in the open. Andy was like, ‘Play your own game,’ but we were saying, ‘Go for their faces!’ ”

The fifth-ranked Bruins found a serving groove that kept the Lions off balance the entire match. UCLA had come up with a variety of serves--a jump, a spin and a floater.

UCLA had seven service aces to Loyola Marymount’s one. Daiva Tomkus (spin) had four aces, and Zeno (jump) had three.

“When we serve like that, we take our opponents out of their offensive pattern,” Banachowski said. “It also gives us good blocking, because we know where the ball is going.”

Tomkus is finding her serves are more consistent and harder since going through a rough spell earlier in the season.

“It’s working well for me,” she said. “I think it’s one of the toughest serves to get--to learn and to receive.”

In another match, No. 17 USC scored a mild upset, beating No. 14 UC Santa Barbara, 4-15, 15-10, 5-15, 15-13, 15-7.

The Trojans (8-4) survived shaky serving the first three games, but regained control in the last two.

“All the serves we missed in the first three games never allowed us to get in control,” USC Coach Chuck Erbe said. “I reminded them before the fifth game that we do serving drills where it’s a mechanical thing, we do mental imagery. I told them to just do it that way.”

The positive imagery salvaged what was a dismal serving night for the Trojans--the team had 20 service errors in the match.

Still, coming off a disastrous season (2-32) and with this young, inexperienced team, Erbe is taking wins any way he can get them.

“Right now, with this team, a ‘W’ is a ‘W’,” he said. “I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I don’t care if we win pretty or we win ugly, just as long as we win.”

In other quarterfinals, top-ranked University of the Pacific beat University of Texas Arlington, 15-3, 15-4, 16-14, and No. 3 Brigham Young defeated Fresno State, 15-5, 15-3, 15-5.

UCLA plays BYU at 1 p.m. today. Matches start at 10 a.m. and continue to the championship game at 8 p.m.