Errors UCI’s demise in five-game setback

MALIBU — If UC Irvine men’s volleyball coach John Speraw could have foreseen the statistical scenario that summarized his team’s Mountain Pacific Sports Federation road match against No. 1-ranked Pepperdine Saturday night, he might have been surprised the match extended beyond three games.

But the No. 2-ranked Anteaters fought hard enough to overcome deficiencies in hitting, serving, passing and blocking — not to mention a raucous home crowd of 1,521 — to take the Waves as far as they could.

So, though Pepperdine emerged with a 28-30, 30-20, 30-25, 22-30, 15-13 victory to virtually end the Anteaters’ chances of defending their regular-season conference title, Speraw was, all things considered, nearly encouraged by his team’s performance.

That performance, at times, was enough to try any coach’s confidence as the Anteaters (22-4, 15-4 in the MPSF) made 25 service errors, 11 more than the Waves, hit .272 to the Waves’ .331, and lost the battles in team blocks (18-12) and digs (38-30).

But Speraw, while acknowledging his team now will likely end up with the No. 3 seed in for the MPSF Tournament, was hardly ready to relay any gloom and doom.

“There were some phases of our game that I was a little frustrated with,” said Speraw, whose team saw its 10-match winning streak halted. “But I think, in general, they’re a very, very good team and they put some pressure on us in ways we’re not used to. Their block is very big and they do a very good job defensively — not just in blocking, but what they do in the backcourt, and we made some errors today. We were able to get away with some of those errors against USC [a road sweep Thursday that was UCI’s first match in 15 days], that we weren’t able to tonight.”

Speraw said his team’s objective remains the same, regardless of Saturday’s outcome.

“[This is] OK, it really is OK,” Speraw said. “We need to go against the best teams and respond to it and we’re not the best team right now. I’m OK with the position that we’re in. We have about a month left here. We need to continue to get better and we’ve shown that we’ve grown. We got smashed in three by this team [30-27, 30-26, 30-23 at UCI Jan. 27] and now, we came back and we had our shot. We didn’t quite get it, but we’re getting closer. And you know we’re definitely pursuing this team, which is the best team right now. We’re going to have to beat them to win it and our goal is to win it, in the end.”

The Anteaters were in it at the end at Firestone Fieldhouse, thanks largely to a cast of veterans who refused to relent.

UCI showed that veteran resolve by winning the first game, though Pepperdine (21-1, 17-1), which extended its winning streak to a school single-season record 18, won the second game with ease.

UCI appeared to gather itself to earn an 8-3 advantage in Game 3, its biggest lead of the match to that point. But Pepperdine rallied to win that game and appeared ready to trim its magic number for hosting the MPSF Tournament to one sooner than later.

But UCI scored the first three points of Game 4 and never trailed to force the deciding game.

The ‘Eaters erased deficits of 2-0, 4-2 and 5-3 to eventually claim leads of 7-6 and 8-7 in Game 5.

But after Pepperdine sophomore Paul Carroll put away the last of his match-high 22 kills, a passing error led to another Waves’ point to put the hosts up, 9-8.

Taylor Wilson banged a kill to pull UCI even, before a familiar foe — the service error — cropped up again.

Wilson drove a jump serve into the net to create a 10-9 deficit that Pepperdine erased with a foot fault on the ensuing serve.

After the two teams exchanged points, J.D. Schleppenbach and setter Jonathan Winder both added kills to create a 13-11 edge and force a UCI timeout.

Jayson Jablonsky responded with a kill for UCI, but followed by missing a jump serve. After David Smith hammered his 14th kill of the night for a UCI point, he fired his jump serve into the net and the Waves celebrated.

Smith hit .500 and added a team-high seven block assists for the visitors, who received 19 kills apiece from Jablonsky (who hit .382) and Matt Webber (.130).

Senior setter Brian Thornton had a match-high 65 assists and sophomore libero Brent Asuka paced the ‘Eaters with 10 digs.