SportsScope : UCLA Women’s Volleyball Coach Aims for His 500th Career Victory

Andy Banachowski, UCLA women’s volleyball coach, is moving in on his 500th career victory, and Coach Nina Matthies should see her Pepperdine women’s volleyball team move up in the rankings this week.

Coach Nancy Fortner’s Loyola Lions (7-3 overall) also were on the move last week, defeating UC Riverside in the home opener and finishing second to San Diego State in the Titan Classic.

Banachowski’s teams had a career record of 497-117 as the week began. His current Bruins, 9-2 overall and 4-0 in the Pac-10 Conference at the start of the week, will be at Texas to play the Longhorns on Friday and Saturday nights. UCLA returns to take on top-ranked San Diego State (17-0) at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Pauley Pavilion.

Matthies’ Waves, upset winners over Texas last week, were 4-2 overall as the week began and will open West Coast Athletic Conference play at the University of San Francisco on Friday, at Santa Clara on Saturday and at Loyola Marymount at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Loyola Marymount (7-3 overall) also opens WCAC play, meeting Santa Clara on the road Friday night after a non-conference match tonight at St. Mary’s.

The Longhorns were 5-0 before losing to Pepperdine, then ranked 17th nationally, and to No. 3 Pacific. Pepperdine hitter Julie Evans had 21 kills against Texas and added 22 in a loss at San Diego State.

UCLA was ranked sixth nationally before splitting a pair of matches at Hawaii and before home wins over Arizona State and Arizona. Middle blocker Lisa Ettesvold led the Bruins with 29 kills against the Arizona schools.

Loyola setter Andrea Fort was named to the All-Titan Classic team and registered 45 assists and 10 digs against UC Riverside.

The No. 5 UCLA men’s soccer team, 3-0-3 as the week began, will be in the Pac-10 Conference tournament this weekend at the University of Washington. The Bruins will meet Stanford on Friday and either Cal or Washington on Saturday.

Last week Coach Sigi Schmid’s Bruins defeated UC Irvine, 2-0, as forward Tom Silvas scored two quick second-half goals, and played a scoreless tie with the University of San Francisco. Against the Dons, UCLA freshman goalie Anton Nistl recorded his third shutout this season, dropping his goals-against average to 0.58, and made four saves.

The Loyola Marymount men’s soccer team, 1-4-1 at the start of the week, will play host to the University of San Diego at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday on the Loyola campus.

The Lions are coming off a 1-1 overtime tie with Cal Lutheran. Loyola sophomore fullback Kevin Lane scored his team’s only goal. Freshman Steve Burke, the Lions’ leading scorer, injured a knee against Cal Lutheran and may be out of action for a while.

Coach Pat Young’s Santa Monica College football team, scoring nearly a point a minute but giving up points at about the same rate, will play host to Compton College in a non-conference game at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

Young’s Corsairs raised their record to 2-0 last week with a 42-39 come-from-behind victory at College of the Desert. In its opener, SMC downed Southwestern, 41-33.

Against Desert, SMC quarterback Kevin Bray hit freshman wide receiver Demetrius (Pee Wee) Smith with a 33-yard scoring strike for the winning touchdown with less than two minutes left. The win gave Young a career record of 100-45-3 in his 16 seasons.

Bray finished the night with 22 completions in 35 attempts for 313 yards and four touchdowns.

Compton (0-2) has surrendered an average of 47 points a game and misses graduated running back Jerry Chaney, who scored all of his team’s touchdown last year in a 27-7 victory over SMC. But the Tartars have a returning star in quarterback Lance Salters, who passed for 264 yards and three touchdowns against the Corsairs last year.

The UCLA water polo team, 10-2 as the week began, came in third and Pepperdine (7-4) finished sixth in last week’s UC Irvine Tournament, won by defending NCAA champion Stanford.

Pepperdine will play in the Eastern Invitational Tournament from Friday through Sunday at Brown University. Other teams in the field are Brown, Navy, Bucknell, Stanford and Harvard.

The UCLA women’s golf team opened the season by finishing sixth in the Brigham Young Invitational. UCLA freshman Jean Zedlitz was fourth with a 220, and sophomore Lana Perhacs was sixth with a 226.

In women’s cross-country, UCLA was third at the UC Riverside Invitational. The Bruins were paced by freshman Laurie Chapman’s fourth-place finish in 17:14, and UCLA junior Kathy Kiernan was seventh in 17:21.

The Santa Monica College men’s and women’s cross country teams will take part Friday in a triangle meet with Ventura and Santa Barbara at Ventura. The three-mile women’s race starts at 3 p.m. and the men’s at 3:45.

In last week’s Mira Costa invitational in San Diego County, Patty Almendariz and Midge Arteaga led the Santa Monica women to fifth place. Almendariz was fifth in 19:44 and Arteaga, sixth in 19:50. The Corsair men had only four finishers in the second segment of the men’s race, one short of what the team needed to score, but SMC freshman Alfredo Perez took third with a 21:48.