UCLA Women’s Volleyball Looks For Bay Area Sweep Against Stanford

With just six matches left in the regular season, the UCLA Women’s Volleyball team is in a three-way tie for first place with Stanford and Washington. Two of those six remaining matches are against the teams they are tied with.

That makes tonight’s match against Stanford a little more important. Of course, a loss isn’t insurmountable, but, with so few matches remaning, it will be difficult for the loser of this one to recover since the winner will remain in first place.

Of course, it helps that the Bruins have been playing very well. They’ve gone 8-1 over their last nine matches.

Most recently, on Thursday, the Bruins swept UC Berkeley in three sets 25-15, 25-20, 25-6. It was a career night for Claire Felix who had 8 blocks in the match.

The match was close for the first four points. After a Torrey Van Winden kill to start the match, Cal scored two straight points to take a 2-1 lead. An attack error by the Golden Bears tied it back up at 2-2 started at 11-1 Bruin run. On the next point, Reily Buechler added her first kill of the match giving the Bruins a 3-2 lead and, after that point, UCLA never trailed again in the entire match. At the end of the run, UCLA led 12-3. UC Berkeley went on a short 3-1 run to make it 13-6. The teams split the next 6 points before the Bruins went on a 5-1 run to give UCLA a 21-10 advantage. After UC Berkeley tried mounting a late comeback, the Bruins closed out the set winning 25-15.

UCLA never trailed in the second set as they jumped out to a 4-0 lead, but the Bears came roaring back to cut the lead to 1 at 6-5. The Bruins added a 5-1 run to take an 11-6 lead. In the remainder of the set, UC Berkeley would get as close as 3 several times, but they just couldn’t get any closer.

In the third set, the Bruins to a quick 5-1 lead. Cal scored 2 of the next 3 points making it 6-3 UCLA. And, that’s when the Bruins went on a massive 16-0 run to take an overwhelming 22-3 lead before the teams split the final 6 points giving UCLA a 25-6 win in the third set and a three-set sweep.

Overall, Torrey Van Winden led the Bruins with 9 kills and 9 digs while Buechler added 8 kills and 8 digs of her own. Kylie Miller and Ryann Chandler each had 13 assists while Taylor Formico led the team with 21 digs.

And so, the Bruins look to continue their momentum when they head across the Bay to Palo Alto this evening. Stanford has given UCLA trouble of late, having won seven of the last eight. But, the plus side is that UCLA snapped a seven-game losing streak when the Cardinal visited Westwood last month. The Bruins will look to turn that win into a two-game winning streak over Stanford.

#13 UCLA Women's Volleyball (20-5, 11-4)

Opponent: Stanford Cardinal (17-6, 11-4)

When: 7 pm PT, Saturday, November 12, 2016

Where: Maples Pavilion, Palo Alto, CA

TV: None

Stream: Twitter, Pac-12 Plus and the Pac-12 Now App

Audio: None

Live Stats: Stanford Cardinal Stat Broadcast

Official Game Preview

Go Bruins!!!