LA JOLLA, Calif. - The UC San Diego men's volleyball team dropped it second straight-set decision in as many nights to third-ranked preseason conference favorite Brigham Young University in Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) action inside RIMAC Arena on Saturday. Set scores were 25-19, 25-13 and 25-21.
UCSD fell to 5-19 overall and 0-18 in the MPSF. BYU improved to 19-3 overall and 15-3 in league play, keeping pace atop the standings with Stanford and UCLA.
The Tritons did not hold an advantage until the third and final set, which featured nine tie scores and six lead changes before the visitors eventually pulled it out.
Junior outside hitter Ian Colbert had a team-high 12 kills, hitting .379 with just one third-set error among 29 swings in all. Tanner Syftestad added eight kills.
UCSD managed just six block assists for 3.0 total team blocks, against 7.5 for BYU, which also out-aced the home side, 7-1. The Cougars hit .402 (46-13-82) as a team.
Triton head coach Kevin Ring used all 14 of his players in uniform, including sophomore Cole Kendrick, who had just made his season debut on Friday night, late in the first set, and redshirt freshman middle blocker Drew Sloane, who started the third after having not appeared since March 4.
BYU was again led by its sophomore tandem of opposite Ben Patch and outside hitter Brenden Sander, who produced 14 and 12 kills, respectively. Patch was perfect over his first six attacks, with six kills through the early stages of game two, and didn't commit a hitting error until two of them back-to-back for UCSD's final points of the night, the first on a stuff block by Sloane and Syftestad. He still finished at .600 (14-2-20), a night after attacking at a .667 (14-0-21) rate with no miscues.
Late in the first frame, three straight Cougar errors closed UCSD to within just four at 21-17 and forced BYU's first timeout. Colbert and Shayne Beamer then teamed up for a big block on Tim Dobbert, but the Cougars responded with the only triple stuff of the night, that from Michael Hatch, Jake Langlois and Robbie Sutton, to get to set point at 24-19. Sutton, BYU's senior backup setter and San Diego native out of Rancho Bernardo High School, then dumped one at the net to close out the game.
UCSD achieved a third and final tie in the second set, at 6-6, at the end of a 3-0 run that included a pair of Colbert kills. BYU answered right back with three straight points of its own. After another Colbert kill, a second 3-0 string around a Triton timeout made it 12-7. The Cougars cruised from there, with three more 3-0 runs.
A stretch of four successive points gave UCSD a slim 12-11 edge midway through the final stanza. Luke La Mont served the Tritons' lone ace to get within 11-10, with Colbert then handling the overpass to level the score. Sander's attack error punctuated that sequence. Once again, however, BYU's reply was at the ready, and moments later, the visitors were back in front for good at 15-12, with Patch accounting for two kills and a combo block with Hatch.
UCSD has one final road trip next week, traveling to Riverside on Friday, April 1, to take on California Baptist at 7 p.m., before a date with USC in Los Angeles the following night.
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