SDSU Gains Experience : College volleyball: Aztecs lose match with Israeli national team but both coaches pleased to see teams against international competition.

Both San Diego State Coach Jack Henn and Mario Treibitch, coach of the Israel national team, were hoping for the same result when their two teams met in a men’s volleyball exhibition match at Peterson Gym Tuesday night.

And it didn’t have anything to do with the score of the match, which Israel won with relative ease, 15-4, 15-13, 15-11 before 519.

“I hope to get some experience out of it,” Henn said. “For all of those guys, I think it’s their first international experience.”

Treibitch had a similar goal for the match, which concluded an eight-match swing against Southern California college teams.

“It shows our weakness to ourselves,” Treibitch said. “This is what the trip is for. Before this trip, we played a few matches in Israel. We need to get some game experience.”

Israel is hoping to use the trip to prepare its team for international competition. The Aztecs are preparing for their Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn. season, which starts at home against Hawaii, ranked No. 3 in the country in a preseason poll, Feb. 6 and 7.

None of the college teams proved much of a challenge to Israel, which won all eight of its matches--including two over defending NCAA champion UCLA.

“It was tough,” said Treibitch, who is from New York and has been under contract to coach the Israeli team for the past year. “We had a goal to win eight matches so there was some psychological pressure.”

Against the Aztecs, Israel took on the look of a team that had been playing too many matches against teams that barely kept their mental attention.

SDSU could do little against Israel in the first game, but came back and battled in the second and third games. Although, Israel helped SDSU’s cause with some mental errors.

“We were intimidated as the first game showed,” Henn said. “We over reacted on a lot of balls. Those are plays we make hundreds of times in practice.

“Israel has a residual skill that is far and above what our guys will have, even when they graduate, just because of the repetitions they get.”

After hitting for a minus .080 in the first game, the Aztecs got their offense untracked. But it wasn’t enough to offset Israel’s finesse and domination of the net.

SDSU was in a position to win the second game, taking a 13-12 lead on a kill off the block by Douglas Morland. But Alon Grinberg’s kill gave Israel a side out. Grinberg, who finished with 13 kills, scored on another spike off the Aztec block to tie the game at 13-13. SDSU then handed the game to Israel on two errors.

Morland led all players with 15 kills and Tagore Evans added 14 for the Aztecs.