NCAA VOLLEYBALL / WEST REGIONAL : Top-Heavy Draw Irks Coaches

The NCAA women’s volleyball West Region semifinals tonight at UCLA look more like the national semifinals.

And none of the four coaches whose teams will play--UCLA, Stanford, Arizona and Brigham Young--is pleased with the arrangement.

In a rematch of last season’s NCAA final, top-ranked UCLA (28-1) will play sixth-ranked Stanford (22-6), the defending champion, at 6 at the Wooden Center.

Fourth-ranked BYU (27-2) will play 16th-ranked Arizona (20-10) at 8.

West Region coaches are unhappy because the regional tournament is by far the most difficult of any this weekend.

“I’m not excited to be in this regional,” Stanford Coach Don Shaw said. “It’s just too bad that, for a lot of reasons, they have got to seed the tournament the way they do.”

The NCAA women’s volleyball committee seeds all but the nation’s top four teams regionally, rather than nationally. The West Region is exceptionally strong this season because several of the nation’s top teams are from the Pacific 10 Conference, and all Pac-10 teams were put in this region.

For Pac-10 champion UCLA, this means a very difficult road to the final four despite being top-ranked and having had a near-perfect regular season.

“We feel that we should have been rewarded a little bit more justly,” said Coach Andy Banachowski, who led the Bruins to NCAA titles in 1984, 1990 and 1991.

However fair or unfair the pairings, the West Regional figures to feature some intense matches.

The UCLA-Stanford meeting will add fuel to an already hot rivalry. Last year, the Bruins remained undefeated throughout the regular season and were trying for their third consecutive NCAA championship when they lost to the Cardinal at New Mexico.

Stanford has played UCLA closer than anyone else in recent years. The Cardinal has dealt the Bruins three of their seven losses in the last three seasons.

But much has changed since last season’s NCAA final. UCLA and Stanford each lost five seniors.

“This really doesn’t have anything to do with last year’s (national championship),” Shaw said.

UCLA has defeated Stanford twice this season, both matches having been decided in the fifth, rally-scoring game.

The Bruins are led by sixth-year senior Julie Bremner, who played for the U.S. national team in 1989 and 1990. Bremner averages 13.36 set assists and 3.18 digs a game.

Arizona is the only team this season to have defeated UCLA.

The semifinal winners will play Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Wooden Center. The final four is Dec. 16 and 18 at Madison, Wis.