The Anteaters of UCI fall to UCLA Bruins in straight sets – Volleyball news
The Crawford Court in Irvine, California hosted a wonderful Mountain Pacific Sports Federation match on Saturday.
Men’s volleyball teams from University of Irvine and University of California Los Angeles came into a head-to-head fight. The Anteaters of UCI were labelled as the hosts of the competition but they failed to profit the home advantage.
The local team gave out the match in straight sets and received a 0-3 (21-25, 21-25, 23-25) defeat from UCLA Bruins.
UCLA’s Quiroga provided most of the damage to Anteaters. He recorded a hitting percentage of .435 and contributed 14 points. He was joined by his teammate Thomas Amberg, who registered 10 impressive kills. Furthermore, Amberg was credited with an ace and
two block assists in the match.
The home team, most essentially relied on outside hitter Connor Hughes but he could not lead his team to success. He notched up team-high nine kills and two blocks, while senior opposite Carson Clark added eight kills. On the whole, the Bruins restricted
Anteaters to attain a hitting percentage of .273 in contrast to their .378 mark.
The defeat proved to be a big blow for Anteaters as they had completed 10-matches winning streak in their last meeting with UC Santa Barbara. Overall, the Anteaters now stand with 19-4 in the season.
The hosts suffered from early setbacks in the match. In the first set, the Anteaters started out poorly and trailed behind with a gap of five points (2-7). The Bruins, on the other hand, took full advantage of the situation and further stretched the gap
of points to 17-12. UCI tried to shorten the gap of points but could not get any closer to Bruins. The visiting UCLA squad remained remarkably consistent and claimed first set, 25-21.
UCI got slightly better in the following set but UCLA still remained ahead in the scores. Amberg of UCLA devastated the defence line of Anteaters with his unstoppable kills and cross court shots.
On top of it, UCI committed too many unforced mistakes and constantly remained in the blues. After the second technical timeout, the Anteaters came up with back row attack and tried their best to avoid any silly mistakes.
As a result, they managed to catch up with Bruins at 19-20. However, UCLA stopped the UCI attackers at 21 points and quickly closed second set, 25-21.
In the third set, hosts led 15-13 before Bruins rallied a terrific 4-1 run and took the lead 17-16. The tie of score at 22-22 created a bit of spark on the centre court but the Bruins came up with back-to-back attacks and finished the set 25-23 and the match,
3-0.
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