A day after coming back from a two-game deficit against No. 8/8 BYU, it was No. 5/3 UC Irvine who found itself in danger of being on the wrong end of a reverse-sweep. However, the Anteaters would regain their footing in the fifth game to put away the Cougars 25-17, 26-24, 23-25, 23-25, 15-10 and remain undefeated.
Opposite William D’Arcy led the Anteaters with a career-high 22 kills at a .462 clip, with four of his kills coming in the decisive fifth game. Outside hitter Andrej Jokanovic contributed on both ends with 14 kills and 10 digs, while middle blocker Trevor Clark had 11 kills and a career-high seven blocks.
BYU outside hitter Connor Oldani mirrored D’Arcy by also recording a career-high 22 kills while hitting for .349. Trent Moser and Teilon-Jonathan Tufuga rounded out the Cougar’s offense with 14 and eight kills respectively.
UCI jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the first and rode that momentum to comfortably take the first, hitting for .542 while limiting BYU to a mere .080 hitting percentage.
The Cougars held a sizable 15-9 lead in the second stanza before the ‘Eaters eventually rallied back to take their first lead of the set at 21-20 off of multiple attack errors by BYU. UCI would not trail again and closed the set off a Clark kill and double block by Cameron Kosty and Beck Weber.
After hitting for .08 and .103 in the first and second sets, Kyle Zediker came in as setter for the Cougars in the third set, immediately providing a much needed boost as he quarterbacked the Cougars to a .391 and .433 hitting percentage in the tightly contested third and fourth sets.
The two teams traded leads multiple times at the top of the fifth set, but a Jokanovic kill and triple block gave UCI the lead for good at 8-6. The ‘Eaters closed out the match off a BYU service error and kill by Andon Kiriakou.
This article was provided to Off the Block courtesy of reporter Brendan Yu.