UCLA’s Business as Usual Is Not Enough in Final

UCLA’s women volleyball players sat on their bench Saturday and stared at the NCAA runner-up trophy, dumbfounded.

It was a night that was supposed to have brought them unprecedented renown. Instead, events had spun quickly and wildly out of control.

Stanford upset the Bruins in the NCAA Division I final at New Mexico’s University Arena in four games, ending their bid for a record third consecutive national championship. The loss also snapped UCLA’s 43-match winning string.

Afterward, Bruin Coach Andy Banachowski and his players looked as if they weren’t quite sure what had hit them.

It wasn’t that they had been overconfident, they said, and it wasn’t that they had felt too much pressure to win again.

The Bruins lost, Natalie Williams said, because they “did not execute.” Asked why, Williams said: “I don’t know.”

Banachowski said: “I can’t quite put my finger on it. I think Stanford played with a lot more enthusiasm than we did.”

Cardinal Coach Don Shaw agreed, saying: “Aside from all the hype and the quotes and the talk and all that, we knew that when it came right down to it, at that first serve, the team that executed better would be the team that won.”

Stanford had its only two losses of the season to UCLA. The key to their third meeting, was that Stanford was able to adapt.

Shaw said he spent the entire season preparing to meet UCLA in the playoffs. The Cardinal could not match up, physically, against the Bruins, so Shaw unveiled several new offensive rotations in the final, which threw UCLA off balance.

“One thing you give Stanford kids credit for is, they’re probably pretty smart,” Shaw said.

UCLA’s entire game plan, on the other hand, was to do the same thing that everyone had seen them do all season.

“I just kept wondering,” Shaw said after the final, “If (Banachowski would) try to do something different just for the finals, or if it was just going to be business as usual for him--here it is, try to stop it. And that’s basically what it was.”

The NCAA final marked an apparent changing of the guard.

With Stanford’s match point, UCLA’s five starting seniors ended their collegiate careers.

At that moment, there were three freshmen and one sophomore on the court for the Cardinal. Cary Wendell, a freshman hitter and setter, was named to the NCAA all-tournament team.

For the Bruins, Bremner will be the sole returning starter next season.

Irene Renteria and Alyson Randick will take over for Marissa Hatchett and Lisa Hudak at middle blocker.

Renteria, a junior, was Volleyball Monthly’s co-high school player of the year at Las Vegas Clark High in 1989.

Jenny Johnson and Annett Buckner will replace Elaine Youngs and Jenny Evans at left-side hitter. Buckner started in 1991 but became a reserve this season when Evans returned from a shoulder injury.

Michelle Mauney, a redshirt sophomore from El Toro High, might replace Williams on the right side.

“We’re going to look like little kids next year compared to the big, strong (players) that we have out there now,” Banachowski said.

But that might not be so bad. Stanford wasn’t very big this year, either.

Athletic prowess runs in the family of several members of the UCLA women’s volleyball team. Consider these Bruin fathers:

--Nate Williams, who played for eight years in the NBA, most recently with the Golden State Warriors, is the father of Natalie Williams. Natalie also plays basketball for UCLA.

--Rafer Johnson, the 1960 Olympic decathlon champion, is the father of Jenny Johnson. Jim Johnson, a former San Francisco 49er, is Jenny’s uncle.

--Cleveland Buckner, who played for the New York Knicks, is the father of Annett Buckner.

--Andy Banachowski, 26-year veteran UCLA women’s volleyball coach, is the father of Amy Banachowski, a junior defensive specialist for UCLA.

Watching his daughter from the stands in the University Arena Saturday, Nate Williams took some of the credit for Natalie’s talent, but not all of it.

“I can definitely beat (Natalie) in one-on-one basketball, but I cannot touch her in volleyball,” Nate said while watching Natalie warm up for the NCAA final. “That’s her territory out there. I don’t even mess around with that.”

Natalie Williams caught a plane out of Albuquerque to meet the UCLA women’s basketball team in Columbus, Ohio, where she is expected to play against Ohio State Tuesday night.

The USC men’s tennis team was ranked No. 1 in the Intercollegiate Tennis Assn. fall rankings.

All six singles players have returned from last season, when the Trojans advanced to the NCAA Division I men’s team semifinals, where they lost to Notre Dame.

Brain MacPhie, who defeated David Wheaton in the second round of the Hall of Fame tennis championships at Newport, R.I., in July, is USC’s No. 1 singles player.

The Pepperdine women’s basketball team won its first four games of the season for the first time since the 1979-80 season.

The Waves averaged 85.3 points and outscored their opponents by an average of 15.3 points while defeating UC Irvine, Cal State San Bernardino, UC Santa Barbara and Cal State Northridge.

Pepperdine lost to Oregon State, 77-60, at home last Wednesday to end its streak.

Notes

ESPN will televise tapes of the NCAA Division I women’s volleyball semifinal matches. The Cal State Long Beach-Stanford semifinal will be shown Thursday at 9 p.m., the Florida-UCLA semifinal Friday at 9 p.m. CBS will show the taped final on Jan. 23 at 11 a.m. . . . Amy Lundquist, a freshman on the Loyola Marymount women’s basketball team, scored 15 points and had 14 rebounds and 15 blocked shots in the Lions’ 71-52 victory over Western Illinois on Sunday at Loyola Marymount. Lundquist’s 15 blocked shots set a new NCAA Division I record. The former record of 13 was held by Suzanne Johnson of Monmouth, Ill., and Stefanie Kasperski of the University of Oregon.