SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — The UC San Diego men's volleyball team and first-year head coach Brad Rostratter opened the season Thursday night with a 3-2 victory over Lincoln Memorial at UC Santa Barbara's Asics Invitational.
Scores were 25-18, 15-25, 25-23, 20-25, and 16-14 in favor of the Tritons. LMU fell to 0-2 as it had lost to No. 5 Pepperdine Wednesday in Malibu.
It was the first-ever match between the Tritons and Railsplitters, an Independent team from Tennessee.
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HOW IT HAPPENED
Senior outside hitter
Ryan Ka led the Tritons offensively with a match-high 20 kills.
Berkeley Miesfeld and
Nick Rigo followed with eight kills each.
Matthew Lim had seven and
Jim Garrison had six. Rigo added five blocks.
Setter
Gabriel Dyer finished with 41 assists, nine digs, and four kills. He hit .800, putting down the four kills with no errors in five total attempts.
Freshman libero
Evan Boyle led all players defensively with 10 digs.
UC San Diego came out on fire, hitting .529 with 10 kills and a single error in 17 attack attempts in the opening set. The Tritons came out slow in the second set, hitting -.100, but recovered by attacking at .364 in the third set. The They dropped again the fourth stanza, hitting .147, but swung at .370 in the deciding set, finishing at .250 (53-23-120).
Both squads had 23 errors from the service line. LMU held a 12-4 advantage in blocks.
For the Railsplitters, Shay Spadaro put down 18 kills while Cole Campisano followed with 14. Kohl Kutsch had six blocks and 48 assists. The team hit .345 (55-16-113).
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FROM HEAD COACH BRAD ROSTRATTER
"We got to see how we respond to adversity tonight. That has been a major focus of ours as we've moved through training and the group has done nothing but respond positively and improve. That was on display tonight. Our serving was inconsistent, but we managed it in the fifth set to allow to claw our way back after finding ourselves down 13-14.
Our first win as a team feels good, but we have shifted our focus to going to battle tomorrow. We have just started an ultra-competitive weekend. Planning to be successful and putting the effort forth to be successful is our sole focus."
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TRITON TIDBITS
• Three Tritons made their collegiate debuts tonight:
Evan Boyle,
Jim Garrison, and
Josh Schellinger.
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Berkeley Miesfeld had not played in a match since 2020.
• It was UC San Diego's first five-set match since taking down Long Beach State, the second-ranked team in the country, on April 9, 2022, in La Jolla.
• Brad Rostratter was named UC San Diego's head coach on Oct. 7, 2022.
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UP NEXT
UC San Diego continues tourney play at Robertson Gymnasium in Santa Barbara Friday with a match against UCLA, the second-ranked team in the nation.
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About UC San Diego Athletics
After two decades as one of the most successful programs in NCAA Division II, the UC San Diego intercollegiate athletics program began a new era in 2020 as a member of The Big West in NCAA Division I. The 23-sport Tritons earned 30 team and nearly 150 individual national championships during its time in Divisions II and III and helped guide 1,400 scholar-athletes to All-America honors. A total of 83 Tritons have earned Academic All-America honors, while 38 have earned prestigious NCAA Post Graduate Scholarships. UC San Diego scholar-athletes exemplify the academic ideals of one of the world's preeminent institutions, graduating at an average rate of 90 percent, the highest rate among public institutions in Divisions I and II.
