UCLA Women Beat No. 1 Stanford to Win West

The Stanford women’s volleyball team is ranked above all others, but on Friday night it was only second best against No. 6 UCLA.

It wasn’t that top-ranked Stanford played poorly. The Bruins simply played nearly flawless in winning the NCAA West Regional final in little more than an hour, 15-2, 15-12, 16-14.

A crowd of 4,839 in Maples Pavilion barely had time to get settled when UCLA, which lost twice to Stanford during the regular season, won the first game in eight minutes.

A Bruin team that had struggled for much of the season will prepare to defend its national championship at Pauley Pavilion as winners of eight consecutive matches without losing a game.

The Bruins (29-5) will meet the winner of tonight’s Mideast Regional final between Ohio State and Nebraska on Thursday. And if they play as well as they did Friday night, a victory is nearly certain.

“They better play that way next week,” said Stanford Coach Don Shaw, whose Cardinal has not defeated UCLA in any of four postseason matches. “If they continue to play that way, I don’t see any team that can beat them.”

Shaw called the Bruins’ play “scary.”

Practically everything the Cardinal hit was kept in play by Bruin defenders, who held the Cardinal to 10% hitting and forced 26 errors to UCLA’s 14.

The UCLA hitters, meanwhile, pounded Stanford from all angles, Natalie Williams doing most of the damage.

“We try to key on Natalie because we know that when she gets hot, she’s really hot,” Stanford’s Jennifer Jackson said.

“We keep an eye on her and hopefully do the best we can. We didn’t do so well tonight.”

After the Bruins opened a 10-5 lead in the second game, Stanford rallied to tie the score, 12-12.

But after the Stanford band concluded its rendition of Oingo Boingo’s “It’s a Dead Man’s Party,” UCLA ran off three points and pretty much ended Stanford’s.

Stanford (30-2) threatened to take UCLA to a fourth game, leading, 11-8, but the Bruins, largely behind Williams’ hitting, scored the next six points. Stanford tied at 14, but a kill by Laurie Jones and a serve by Williams that was touched as it was going ended the match.

Setter Julie Bremner directed an almost perfect match, going primarily to Williams, who led all players with 15 kills. Elaine Youngs had 10 and Marrissa Hatchett added eight.

Stanford’s Kristen Klein and Bev Oden finished with 10 and nine, respectively, but all too often were turned away by Bruin blockers.

“The past two times we played Stanford were probably the worst two (matches) of the year,” Williams said.

“We were very confident after watching them (extended to five games against USC) Thursday night.”