Wednesday night elevated a rivalry for men’s volleyball, who were defeated by the UC San Diego Tritons 3-2 in La Jolla, California. 

With incredible rallies, highlight-reel plays and even emotions boiling over between players and fans, the final score hardly tells the story. This game was the Trojans’ most tightly contested of the season.

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“We figured out in some of those sets that we can play with anyone regardless of where we are,” senior middle blocker Kyle Paulson said in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “We’ve just gotta keep playing our game and trusting our coaching.” 

USC (10-16, 3-9 Pac12) and UCSD (3-6)hung tight with each other all night long, and it turned a vibrant Southern California matchup into a can’t-miss event, setting up future matchups between the Trojans and Tritons with immense intrigue. 

At first, the match didn’t seem like it was going to be close. The Trojans continued their pattern of strong play in the first set and ran away with a 25-18 set one win to open the match with a 1-0 lead. 

The Tritons rebounded, however, maintaining a solid lead nearly all set long for a 25-21 set two victory. 

At the beginning of the third set, sensing a need for a change, Head Coach Jeff Nygaard inserted sophomore outside hitter Riley Haine into the lineup. It was Haine’s first action in four matches, as he has been dealing with an ankle injury. But now that he was physically fit to play, he made sure to stay mentally prepared as well. 

“I was just mentally checked in the entire game even when I was on the bench,” Haine said. “Then when Coach gave me the OK that I was gonna get thrown in, I started warming up about five minutes before I got put in, and that’s really it.” 

Haine’s preparedness through the uncertainty of how much he may be able to play paid off for him and his team, as he had a productive night with 4 kills and 2 service aces in relief, and elevated the entirety of the team’s play. 

Nygaard acknowledged that having a healthy Haine available greatly benefitted the Trojans throughout the game. 

“He provides value in a lot of different spaces and phases of the game,” Nygaard said. 

He helped the Trojans fight to the bitter end pretty immediately in a 25-23 third set victory that put the Trojans up 2-1 in the match. 

The next two sets would also be decided in classic volleyball fashion — by 2 points, but neither would go the Trojans’ way. A 25-23 fourth set loss and 15-13 fifth set loss put the Trojans on the wrong side of one of the most even and hard-fought battles of the young volleyball season. 

The Trojans’ collective youth and inexperience at the collegiate level may have made the difference in the narrow margin between winning and losing in this match. 

“I think we have a young team that is still trying to figure out their place on the court,” Paulson said. “They all deserve to be there, but I think just the lack of experience right now is getting to us.” 

USC especially has little experience in a hostile environment, as this marked its first true road game of the season. 

“I think it got to us a little bit, just a new environment, something we’re not really used to, home court advantage for them,” Paulson said. 

The opposing fans especially got under the Trojans’ skin in the fifth set, when a UCSD fan threw an object onto the court toward the USC players, sparking an uproar from the Trojan bench and the fan’s ejection from the arena. 

But fortunately for the Trojans, experience will certainly help them stay more level headed in future road tilts. Also, they probably won’t see any wild fans throwing objects again this season. 

USC can also be encouraged by strong play from several players. Reliable as always, sophomore outside hitter Dillon Klein led the Trojans with 15 kills on .321 hitting. 

The Trojans also saw incredibly efficient production from their middle blockers. Paulson had 8 kills on an otherworldly .889 hitting clip while freshman middle blocker Wes Smith added 9 kills on .471 hitting. 

“That’s definitely a strength of our team, running the middle of the court,” Nygaard said. “We’ve got some big boys that do nice things, a lot of good range. So we want to keep feeding those beasts as often as possible.” 

The Trojans will likely look to their beasts in the middle to lead the way in their rematch versus UCSD Friday at Galen Center at 7 p.m. — a matchup they can only hope is every bit as entertaining and way more filled with Trojan revenge than the last. 

“We’re definitely hungry for another shot at those guys,” Nygaard said. “We know we’ve got room to grow and we know that we’re going to be competitive and very hungry.”