BALANCED BRUINS RETURN VOLLEY - INDEED; THEY SWEEP TO NCAA TITLE OVER WAVES.Byline: Jim Inghram Daily News Staff Writer A week ago, Pepperdine defeated UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX at Pauley Pavilion to become king of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation The Mountain Pacific Sports Federation is a college athletic conference whose member teams are located in the western United States. The conference participates in the NCAA's Division I. . Saturday night, UCLA defeated Pepperdine in Honolulu to become national champion. It was the third NCAA NCAA abbr. National Collegiate Athletic Association title in the last four years for the Bruins, who entered the final four as an at-large team. UCLA beat Lewis College in the semifinals Friday. The Bruins (28-4) dominated the Waves (23-5) in every facet en route to the easy 15-11, 15-11, 15-7 victory before 9,822 at the Stan Sheriff Center Stan Sheriff Center is a 10,300-seat multi-purpose arena in Honolulu. The arena opened in 1994 as the Special Events Arena. It is home to the following teams at the University of Hawaiʻi:
http://hawaii.edu/uhinfo.html. See also Aloha, Aloha Net. . The Bruins had five hitters reach double figures in kills and had a .454 hitting percentage for the match. Brandon Taliaferro had 84 assists in directing the UCLA offense. ``I thought (Brandon) had a great game,'' UCLA coach Al Scates said. ``He really distributed. I don't think we had a predictable rotation at all. He kept everyone in the game.'' Adam Naeve, who earned the tournament's Most Valuable Player award, led UCLA with 23 kills. Evan Thatcher had 21 kills, Notre Dame High alumnus Tom Stillwell added 18, Fred Robins had 17 and Ben Moselle had 15. ``This was the first time we had all five hitters hitting well,'' Scates said. Naeve added three service aces and two digs. He committed just one hitting error in 35 attempts and finished with a .629 hitting percentage. ``They may have given me the MVP (Multimedia Video Processor) A high-speed DSP chip from Texas Instruments, introduced in 1994. Officially introduced as the TMS320C80, it combines RISC technology with the functionality of four DSPs on one chip. ,'' Naeve said. ``But this whole team is the MVP. There's no single player on this team. There never has been, and tonight proves it. I felt honored they gave it to me, but this whole team deserves it.'' In addition to its domination up front, UCLA served convincingly better than the Waves. The Bruins registered just one ace and had 27 errors in the MPSF MPSF Mountain Pacific Sports Federation championship loss to Pepperdine but had nine on Saturday, including four in the in an opening-game victory that set the tone for the match. ``UCLA played a tremendous match,'' Pepperdine coach Marv Dunphy said. ``They earned some big points at key times, and we did not capitalize often enough when we had chances to score. UCLA served us tough, and that created too many easy scoring chances.'' Pepperdine was led by 1998 American Volleyball Coaches Association The American Volleyball Coaches Association aka (AVCA) is an organization, incorporated as a private non-profit educational corporation in 1981, as the Collegiate Volleyball Coaches Association. Player of the Year George Roumain, who had 22 kills. Peter Kodascy and Rick Tune added 17 each. ``We laid it all out on the floor,'' said Tune, Pepperdine's middle blocker. ``We just weren't good enough, and UCLA was.'' |
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