LEXINGTON, Ky. — It had to end sometime.
Penn State can’t win them all. The Nittany Lion volleyball team had its record run come to an end Friday evening at Kentucky’s Memorial Coliseum, unable to play consistently and break UCLA.
The Bruins denied fifth a straight NCAA title to Penn State with a 25-20, 25-22, 25-21 victory in the regional semifinals.
“It feels nice,” said UCLA freshman outside hitter Rachael Kidder, who had 15 kills and hit .355. “We aren’t going to focus on that too much, but we definitely talked about how cool it would be to be the ones who finally put an end to their run. It feels good.”
UCLA (26-6) will meet top-seeded Texas (25-4), a 3-1 winner over the host Wildcats, in today’s regional final for a spot in the national semifinals in San Antonio, Texas.
The Nittany Lions (25-8), who finish the season with more losses than in the previous four seasons combined, had their final major NCAA-record win streak snapped. After racking up 109 straight match wins as well as streaks for home and road matches, they had won 26 consecutive tournament contests until Friday’s loss.
Errors were the story for Penn State.
The Nittany Lions, a strong serving team most of the season, managed only two aces while missing nine serves. They also hit just .248 with 15 hitting errors — which matched the Bruins — but took 13 more swings.
The Bruins hit .310 and dominated on the back line, with a 47-31 edge in digs. UCLA also had just three service errors against four aces — two in the waning moments of the match by setter Lauren Van Orden.
“UCLA didn’t have very many errors, and we were averaging about eight a game,” head coach Russ Rose said. “When you start putting yourself in that situation, against a team that is making three to four errors a game, that’s where you are going to win and lose. We were minus-eight in serving and passing. We needed to do better. We knew we needed to serve well to keep the ball in play.”
The Bruins’ power was supplied by Kidder and Kelly Reeves, who hit .474 on 11 kills. Reeves also had 11 digs and three blocks. Van Orden gave out 43 assists, Mariana Aquino and Zoe Nightengale each had three blocks and Lainey Gera picked up 15 digs.
“They are an exceptional ball-handling team, and they dug out a lot of balls,” Rose said. “We really struggled in the serving and passing part of the game.
'I think we had a couple of flashes where we had some chances in each of the games to close the gap, and get us in a little better position, but in each of those cases, UCLA was up to the task with being able to make the play and then put the pressure on us from the end line.”
Penn State was paced by freshman Aiyana Whitney’s 12 kills after she entered the match midway through the first set. Ariel Scott was next with 11 kills, but only three in the final two sets to go with three blocks. Deja McClendon added 10 kills, Katie Slay had six kills and she, Micha Hancock and Nia Grant each had three blocks. Hancock gave out 38 assists and Ali Longo had 10 digs. Hancock, the nation’s leader in total aces with 91, had just one Friday night.
“I was telling the girls going into the match that the key was ball control,” UCLA coach Michael Sealy said. “They are a physical team. We were really concerned about Hancock’s jump serves. I’ve seen video of her just rattling off points and she actually just scored one real point all night, when we called a timeout and she used the jump float. We took the most impressive weapon I’ve seen all year and our passers really neutralized that with the ball control.”
Penn State won the blocking battle 7-6.
The Nittany Lions had started well, building a 12-9 lead in the first set with some big swings for Scott and McClendon, who was playing a little more than an hour away from her home in Louisville. But UCLA gained control with a couple big blocks and kills from Reeves.
“We didn’t make the adjustments that we needed to make,” Scott said. “They played to their strengths, which is serving and passing, and we necessarily didn’t play to our strengths. We definitely had way too many errors.”
The Bruins never trailed in the second frame, working to a 16-11 lead before watching Penn State rally with three Whitney kills and two UCLA errors to knot it at 16-16. But an Aquino kill ended the run and began a streak of 6 out of 7 Bruin points.
It got worse in the third. After opening the set with a serve into the net, the Bruins ran off the next eight points. Penn State clawed back into the set, including three straight points on back-to-back Slay kills and a McClendon ace to get to 14-12, but a Kidder kill ended the comeback attempt and the Bruins would hold the momentum the rest of the match.
Asked about the future for the Nittany Lions, Rose was succinct.
“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” he said. “I have some things I have to think about myself. I think it was a great run that we had over the last couple of years, and there are some great kids coming in that are talented.”
