Post by bigfan on Oct 12, 2006 15:23:57 GMT -5
Out of the frying pan and into the fire. No rest for the weary. Use any number of cliches and chances are that they apply to the Cal volleyball team.
After being swept by No. 6 Stanford on Friday, the No. 7 Bears will go into Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles at 7 p.m. tonight to face No. 3 UCLA.
The Bruins are coming in hot, having just swept Arizona State in Tempe, Ariz. and going a staggering 19-0 to start the season, including 6-0 in the highly-competitive Pac-10.
“This match is a big match for us,” Cal coach Rich Feller said. “Every Pac-10 match is a big match. We’re looking at one good team on Thursday night and then we have to look at another good team (No. 4 USC) on Friday night. This is what the Pac-10 is like every single year, so it’s business as usual.”
The Bears (14-2, 3-2 in the Pac-10) have a more consistent starting lineup than UCLA, but the Bruins have tremendous depth on their bench.
Senior middle blocker Nana Meriwether notches an average of 4.05 kills per game (243 overall) and leads the Bruins with a .509 hitting percentage. She has consistently been UCLA’s premier player since transferring from Duke following a campaign that earned her a selection to the ACC’s All-Freshman team.
But Feller has been careful to prepare the Bears to play the entire Bruins squad, not just Meriwether.
“If it was just her that was hurting you, certainly you would try to stop her,” Feller said. “But, I think that trying to double up on her once in a while and trying to keep a blocker in front of her wherever she goes, just make her life a little tougher is the only way you could do anything. If you do that too much, they’ll set the ball somewhere else and someone else will get hot.”
While UCLA does have depth on Cal, the Bears do still have a more consistently devastating lineup on offense. Cal has five players hitting over .260, while the Bruins have only two—Meriwether and Emily Clements, who has only played in 15 games and started only 9.
What UCLA lacks on offense, it makes up for on defense. Its size and quickness is reminiscent of the same defense that was a bugaboo for the Bears last week in Stanford.
“They’ve got big players at every position so they create difficulty in teams putting the ball away at the net and they’ve got a pretty good defense going for them,” Feller said. “They have a very, very deep bench. They can come off of the bench with different players at almost every position and get production out of them, so if someone is having an off night, they’ve got someone else to step in.”
In preparation for the team’s matchup with the Bruins, Feller and his staff have done whatever they can to put pressure on the team during practice, so that the disappointment at Stanford does not repeat itself in Los Angeles.
“We’ve put them in game situations, in pressure situations, but you can never replicate a foreign gym with a couple thousand people cheering and a band in your ear,” Feller said. “But every opportunity we can in practice, we put pressure on them to perform at critical times and that’s all we can do.”
After being swept by No. 6 Stanford on Friday, the No. 7 Bears will go into Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles at 7 p.m. tonight to face No. 3 UCLA.
The Bruins are coming in hot, having just swept Arizona State in Tempe, Ariz. and going a staggering 19-0 to start the season, including 6-0 in the highly-competitive Pac-10.
“This match is a big match for us,” Cal coach Rich Feller said. “Every Pac-10 match is a big match. We’re looking at one good team on Thursday night and then we have to look at another good team (No. 4 USC) on Friday night. This is what the Pac-10 is like every single year, so it’s business as usual.”
The Bears (14-2, 3-2 in the Pac-10) have a more consistent starting lineup than UCLA, but the Bruins have tremendous depth on their bench.
Senior middle blocker Nana Meriwether notches an average of 4.05 kills per game (243 overall) and leads the Bruins with a .509 hitting percentage. She has consistently been UCLA’s premier player since transferring from Duke following a campaign that earned her a selection to the ACC’s All-Freshman team.
But Feller has been careful to prepare the Bears to play the entire Bruins squad, not just Meriwether.
“If it was just her that was hurting you, certainly you would try to stop her,” Feller said. “But, I think that trying to double up on her once in a while and trying to keep a blocker in front of her wherever she goes, just make her life a little tougher is the only way you could do anything. If you do that too much, they’ll set the ball somewhere else and someone else will get hot.”
While UCLA does have depth on Cal, the Bears do still have a more consistently devastating lineup on offense. Cal has five players hitting over .260, while the Bruins have only two—Meriwether and Emily Clements, who has only played in 15 games and started only 9.
What UCLA lacks on offense, it makes up for on defense. Its size and quickness is reminiscent of the same defense that was a bugaboo for the Bears last week in Stanford.
“They’ve got big players at every position so they create difficulty in teams putting the ball away at the net and they’ve got a pretty good defense going for them,” Feller said. “They have a very, very deep bench. They can come off of the bench with different players at almost every position and get production out of them, so if someone is having an off night, they’ve got someone else to step in.”
In preparation for the team’s matchup with the Bruins, Feller and his staff have done whatever they can to put pressure on the team during practice, so that the disappointment at Stanford does not repeat itself in Los Angeles.
“We’ve put them in game situations, in pressure situations, but you can never replicate a foreign gym with a couple thousand people cheering and a band in your ear,” Feller said. “But every opportunity we can in practice, we put pressure on them to perform at critical times and that’s all we can do.”