Trojans’ winning streak comes to an end

The USC men’s volleyball team lost its first match of the season to the No. 11 Pepperdine Waves with scores 25-23, 20-25, 23-25, 25-16, 17-15.

The loss snapped a six-game winning streak, the best the program has had since 1994.

“To oversimplify it, we’re 6-1,” said USC coach Bill Ferguson. “We’re fine, we’re still the same team, nothing to freak out about. We just need to come in and play better.”

The Trojans played the Waves and traded blows like prizefighters in each set, finishing with a deuce game in the fifth set.

“It was a tough loss,” said senior setter Riley McKibbin. “We just have to bounce back. We have a 25 game season and anything can happen in this league — you can’t expect to go undefeated.”

The parity in the MPSF wasn’t limited to the tough loss in Malibu. UC San Diego, which the Trojans systematically swept, took down No. 2 Stanford on Friday evening. No. 3 BYU also lost to unranked Loyola.

“Pepperdine always seem to figure it out against us when they’re at home,” McKibbin said. “Being No. 1, everybody wants to take us down. Everyone gets amped up to play against a No. 1 team and we’re USC, so everybody hates us anyway.”

Senior opposite Murphy Troy led the way with 29 kills earned at a .435 clip, including big kills at the end of the match to push the Waves to a deuce in the fifth set and a team-high eight digs. In the process, he broke the USC scoring record in the rally-scoring era.

Senior outside hitter Tri Bourne and junior outside hitter Tony Ciarelli also chipped in with 15 and 11 kills, respectively.

“Murphy played a good match,” Ferguson said. “He had some big kills to keep the game close when we needed him too.”

The Trojans dug 34 balls Friday evening, far below their 10-dig-per-set average this season.

“The story of that game is that we didn’t serve them out of system,” Ferguson said. “They ran their offense out of the middle and they got a lot of free looks.”

The Waves exhibited a balanced attack, with four hitters earning more than 10 kills. Sophomore opposite Maurice Torres led the way with 17 kills, followed by redshirt sophomore Beau Vandeweghe’s 15 kills and junior middle blocker Matt Pollock’s 12 kills.

Pepperdine also managed to hit an astronomical .550 and .706 in the fourth and fifth sets respectively.

“They kept siding out and we eventually made an attack error,” Ferguson said. “When it keeps going that long into the fifth, anything can happen.”

The Trojans have relied on a consistent and efficient middle attack this season, but only managed to get junior middle blocker Steven Shandrick only five attempts while senior middle blocker Austin Zahn sat the game out with a sprained ankle. Redshirt junior middle blocker Ian Wright filled in with seven kills.

“They weren’t paying attention to Ian,” Ferguson said. “They were jumping all over Shandrick and really set up to stop him.”

Pepperdine’s size and physicality helped them match USC point for point, finishing with 23 blocks and forcing the Trojans into hitting an uncharacteristically low .292.

“They played very well tonight —hats off to them,” Ferguson said.  “We didn’t play as well as we could have for sure, but we had a lot of chances to put the game away.”