No. 1 USC to conclude regular season versus No. 3 UCLA 

No. 1 USC beach volleyball looks to conclude its unstoppable season on top with one last senior day home match against crosstown rival UCLA. The Trojans play at Merle Norman Stadium at 1 p.m. Friday.

This season, USC has split matches against the No. 3 Bruins, where its one and only loss came on the first weekend of the season — UCLA defeated the Trojans in a 3-2 battle. 

Since then, the Trojans are on a 26 dual win streak, their
third-longest in program history. USC is 27-1 this season.

Head Coach Dain Blanton said he looks forward to Friday’s match, as it will be a potential test for future meetings in the Pac-12 Championship in April and NCAA Championships in May. UCLA is a great way to finish the season.

“It’s fun, and it’s challenging, and the rivalry’s there,” said Blanton in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “You just want to go in, trust your training and play the way that you always play.”

The Trojans come off a successful 4-0 weekend at the Center of Effort Challenge. They took down four ranked opponents, three of which are in the top 10. 

In their first meeting of the season, No. 6 Loyola Marymount took USC and were tied in duals 2-2 until senior Tina Graudina and graduate student Hailey Harward took home the match for the Trojans in three sets on court one. 

USC avenged its only loss this season with a 4-1 win against the Bruins last Saturday. In the match, Graudina and Harward improved to 24-1 on the season, taking revenge on their only loss which came from UCLA in March. They won on court one 21-12, 21-13.

This week, sophomore Megan Kraft and graduate student Sammy Slater took home Pac-12 Pair of the Week. With this award, Slater earned her fourth-career Pac-12 pair of the week. It marks Kraft’s second. 

The No. 2 pair went 4-0 last weekend, making them 20-0 on the season. Kraft and Slater dropped just two sets, one against LMU and one against the Bruins. Both of these matches went the distance and were decided by a third set.

“It’s an amazing honor. I mean, it’s so fun to win with [Kraft], but honestly, these awards show that our team is doing a really great job,” Slater said. “The biggest thing is just being able to win this award for our team, and it shows how much people respect us and how well we’re doing.”

This week’s award marks the third Trojan pair in the last three weeks to be named Pac-12 Beach Volleyball Pair of the Week. USC has been chosen for this award 26 times, the most among all Pac-12 schools.

The Trojans will honor 11 seniors, graduates and fifth year students before Friday’s dual. For graduating players, it will be their final match on Merle Norman Stadium sand. 

“I want to just really take in the moment,” said Harward, who’s played at Merle Norman Stadium for five years. “[I’ll] just enjoy each moment and not worry about the outcome at all and just enjoy it with my team.”

For Blanton, he believes senior day will be bittersweet, but it has the potential to end their season on a memorable high note.

“They’re just such great kids, and they’ve defined the culture that we have,” Blanton said. “They’re really trying to become the best that they can.”

With the Pac-12 Championship less than a week away and the NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship just around the corner, USC is locked in with hopes of taking home some hardware this season.

“We use every match to try to learn something and get a little better, and I think the players are really locked into that philosophy right now,” Blanton said. “The culture is good and the players are training that need to be training.”

Senior day festivities will begin at 12:45 p.m. Friday where each graduating player will receive honors. The Trojan Marching Band will be in attendance and there will be a Trojan Fever will giveaway towels for the first 250 students in attendance. 

The Trojans will begin the match at 1 p.m. at Merle Norman Stadium.