The Stanford’s men’s volleyball team struggled to shake off the rust as it returned to league play last weekend for the first time since March 6, earning a weekend split against Cal State Northridge and Long Beach State at Maples Pavilion.
The last-place Matadors pushed the Card to the brink in five sets before senior outside hitter Spencer McLachlin iced the hard-fought, 3-2 victory with two straight kills on Friday night, but the team could not overcome the athleticism of No. 9 Long Beach and the nearly perfect play of Antwain Aguillard, who had 24 kills with a .686 hitting percentage in the 49ers’ 3-2 victory.
The No. 2 Cardinal (15-5, 12-4 MPSF) lost a non-conference match against NAIA champion California Baptist two weekends ago, but that game saw three of Stanford’s starters (freshman Brian Cook, juniors Brad Lawson and Gus Ellis) sitting in order to give some of the younger players an opportunity to play in a competitive environment.
Freshman outside hitter Steven Irvin made the most of his third start of the year, tallying a career-high 13 kills as Stanford nearly pulled out the victory, dropping the fifth and final set in extra frames 16-14.
On Saturday night against Long Beach (12-10, 10-7), Stanford played its third consecutive five-set match, and second of the weekend, and looked tired in front of a small crowd of just 767 at Maples.
The Cardinal’s outside hitters–McLachlin and Lawson–stepped up with 21 kills apiece, and the duo hit a combined .364 even though the team hit .291 overall and just .245 in the final two sets. It didn’t help that Long Beach was pounding the ball by the end of the match, hitting a ridiculous .658 with no attacking errors in the final two sets.
McLachlin said he thought Stanford could build off the fact that it even had a chance to win the match in the face of such an efficient attack.
“[A few breakdowns in the serve-receive game] is the difference in this league,” he said. “We can be right there, even if a team’s hitting .400. But a mental breakdown late in the game is all it takes.”
Junior libero Erik Shoji added 16 digs, but the Cardinal struggled to find an offensive flow throughout the match. After McLachlin and Lawson, the rest of the offense combined for just 17 kills with 10 errors, not enough to take down a 49ers team that sits in the middle of the MPSF standings.
But while Saturday’s loss was disappointing, it was not very shocking given the team’s struggles the previous night against Northridge and the general parity in the MPSF.
Friday’s match followed a script almost identical to Saturday’s, except that Stanford’s offense managed to pick it up in the final two sets instead of falling off. As a team, the Cardinal was still below its season average with a .250 hitting percentage, but hit .308 and .421 in the fourth and fifth games.
Lawson and McLachlin had 23 and 24 kills respectively, accounting for most of Stanford’s output, but the duo got some much-needed help from freshmen Eric Mochalski and Brian Cook. Middle blocker Mochalski and outside hitter Cook had a combined 17 kills despite totaling 11 errors and hitting just .146.
However, the man of the match for the Cardinal might have been little-used middle blocker Charley Henrikson. The redshirt junior from Lafayette, Calif., stands at 6-foot-7 and has an impressive vertical leap but has struggled to crack the rotation in his career with just 30 appearances and 12 starts.
But with the Cardinal unable to pull away in the fifth set, Henrikson pounded a nice set from Barry inside the 10-foot line and notched his third kill of the match. The point gave a jolt to Stanford’s game and started a three-point surge that carried the Card to a 15-11 game win and the match victory.
With classes back in session this week, Stanford looks to jump back into the swing of things and regain the momentum it had before the long layoff, when it won five consecutive matches.
Stanford hosts a midweek non-conference match against UC-Santa Cruz on Wednesday before No. 1 USC and Pepperdine come to town for two weekend showdowns.