No. 10 Trojans look for CSUN sweep


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Freshman outside hitter Dillon Klein leads the Trojans in total kills (92) and is top 20 in the nation in kills per set (3.54). (Brooks Taylor | Daily Trojan)

After emerging victorious from a tug-of-war against No. 14 UC Santa Barbara Thursday, No. 10 USC will look to continue its momentum against CSUN on Wednesday. Under Head Coach Jeffery Nygaard, the Trojans have a 5-2 overall record heading into the match against the Matadors. Two brothers, CSUN’s Kyle Hobus and USC’s Luke Hobus will clash.

“[We want to get] their setter uncomfortable,” said sophomore opposite hitter Luke Hobus in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “They’ve got some big pins, ones like my brother, so I don’t want him hitting.”

Kyle Hobus led all players with 11 kills in the Matadores’ previous match against the Trojans and currently leads CSUN with 66 strikes on the season. The San Pedro native is 24th in the nation with 3.47 kills per set.

“He’s their go-to guy,” Nygaard said. “[He is a] big, physical [guy] that improved in a lot of ways from last year to this year.. . We’re going to throw a number of different things at him and see what works for us.”

USC defeated CSUN three sets to zero earlier in the month at the ASICS Invitational. However, the game was closer than the match score suggests, with the Trojans winning by 3 points or less in two of the three sets.

Graduate opposite hitter Kevin Kobrine and redshirt junior opposite hitter Simon Gallas led the Trojans with 9 kills each in that game. Kobrine is second on the team in kills with 77 in seven matches. 

Aside from Kobrine, USC’s offense is led by freshman outside hitter Dillon Klein, who is having a fantastic start to his collegiate career. After recording just 11 kills in the first two games of the season, Klein has notched 81 kills in the last five games. 

The freshman is 20th in the nation with an average of 3.54 kills per set. As a team, the Trojans are 14th in Division 1 with 12.04 kills per set. Klein credits his early success to junior setter Nate Tennant.

“Nate trusts me a lot,” Klein said. “He sets the ball really nicely [. . .] If you get a good pass, you get a good set. With a good set, it’s easy to get a good swing.”

Klein will have to face a CSUN team that is on a four-game winning streak after failing to win a single set against USC and No. 2 UCLA to start the season. Defensively, CSUN limits opponents to a .188 hitting percentage, the ninth-best mark in the nation. Klein recognizes that USC will have to handle the ball well to get past the Matadores’ defenses.

“We want to control the first contact whether it’s serving or it’s passing,” Klein said. “[We want to be] the best we can be and then let the rest of our game take over.”

So far this season, USC is 0-2 on the road, while CSUN is 3-0 at home. Despite this, Nygaard believes his team will do well at the Matadome.

“We’ve proven that we’re a good away game team,” Nygaard said. “We can take our brand of volleyball and perform at a good level everywhere we’ve been so far. We’ve been tested a lot, [only having] one home game.”

And by the way, Luke Hobus says there’s no bad blood between the Hobus brothers.

“[The UCSB game], we had lunch right before, but we weren’t talking about the game,” Kyle Hobus said. “We were just talking about life.”

The Trojans will hit the court at the Matadome on Wednesday at 7 p.m. when they take on CSUN.