National champs

PROVO, Utah — The competitive experience John Speraw said he had against UC Irvine as a player and then assistant coach at UCLA, entailed: “You drive down the freeway, beat [the Anteaters] in an hour, then you hang out in Newport Beach.”

Saturday night, it was UCI that earned the right to party.

The No. 1-seeded and top-ranked Anteaters outlasted No. 3-seeded USC, 26-30, 30-23, 26-30, 30-17, 15-12, to win the NCAA championship, the second in three years for a program that Speraw has, in seven seasons, not only put on the map, but repeatedly taken to the summit.

“I think this championship shows what happened in 2007 wasn’t just lightning striking,” Speraw said.

“I’ve said that a program can win one [title]. It can get a great recruiting class, everyone pans out, everyone stays healthy, someone transfers in, and you get some breaks in the playoffs. But to go to three Final Fours in a four-year period and win two national championships shows that there’s something of real substance here. And I think that’s the case.”

The Anteaters (26-5) were required to show collective substance after falling behind the torrid Trojans (21-11), before 3,015 at BYU’s Smith Fieldhouse. USC had been peaking of late, including a sweep of UCI on April 30 that ended a 10-match losing streak to that suddenly imposing program just down the freeway from Los Angeles. USC knocked off defending champion Penn State in four games Thursday.

UCI senior setter Ryan Ammerman showed some of his now trademark substance by amassing 55 assists, nearly as many block assists (12) as USC had as a team (13), pounding six kills in nine attempts and making five digs. His performance earned him Most Outstanding Player at the Final Four.

Ammerman, the de facto captain of a team with a corps of senior leaders, said it was the storybook ending to a sometimes star-crossed career that he wanted since deciding not to quit the team in the offseason to begin a professional career in Europe.

“I wanted this for a very long time,” Ammerman said of the national crown. “Ever since I decided to come back this year, I’ve thought about it every day. Right now, this feels unbelievable. This is awesome. You couldn’t ask for anything better.”

UCI couldn’t have executed a brilliant game plan any better, said USC Coach Bill Ferguson, who acknowledged that Speraw and assistants Dave Kniffin and Mark Presho, devised a way to derail what had been a runaway Cardinal and Gold train.

Ferguson said a combination of poor USC serving (22 errors and only two aces, opposed to 12 aces and six errors in the MPSF semifinal upset), and some tough UCI serving (four aces, only 11 errors and deft placement), helped skew the competitive equation in a match Speraw called an epic battle.

“Where our serving really hurt us was, we weren’t able to get in a rhythm blocking, or defensively, at all,” Ferguson said. “We were having to get he ball in [with more conservative serves], so we weren’t putting any pressure on them and they were in system the whole night.”

That system included a team-high 21 kills by senior outside hitter Taylor Wilson, who hit .375 to help UCI hit .342 as a team.

Freshman All-American opposite Carson Clark had 15 kills and sophomore outside hitter Jordan DuFault added 14, including match point.

Wilson and Clark also made the all-tournament team.

Middle blockers Austin D’Amore, a freshman, and Bryan Simmons, a junior, had seven block assists apiece, while Wilson added six and sophomore middle Kevin Wynne chipped in three, as did DuFault.

Simmons’ play off the bench in the final two games, including four kills in five attempts, was crucial.

That mix allowed UCI to post 20.5 team blocks, 13 more than the Trojans.

“Fatigue hurt us a little bit, but I think it was more of an emotional thing,” Ferguson said. “They did a very good job of frustrating our outside hitters.”

USC freshman outside hitter Tony Ciarelli hit .089, though he had 15 kills, ranking only behind sophomore opposite Murphy Troy, who had 10 of his 26 kills in a Game 3 victory.

Ciarelli also had seven service errors, including the final points of the second and fourth games.

Clark added nine digs, while senior libero Brent Asuka had seven for the winners, for whom senior Jon Steller (a key Game 5 ace) and Nick Spittle also contributed.

“We talked all season about how we were going to be the team that could grind; just play one point at a time, that we’d be poised and we’d never be flustered,” Speraw said.

“It was a learned skill — something that we all had to practice and we all did throughout the course of the season. And we were all able to execute when it mattered the most. For that, I am most proud.”

Ammerman described the grinding process.

“We were thinking the same thing [after going down 1-2 in games] that we were on point one of the first game and point 14 of the fifth game,” Ammerman said. “That was, how were we going to score points and how were we going to sideout. That was it.

“Every single person on the court, after every single point, would say ‘Next point. Next point.’ Every person on the court said it all night long.”

And then they partied.