THE COLLEGES / ROB FERNAS : Pepperdine Women Make Waves at Start but Quickly Recede

Please excuse Nina Matthies if she’s a little bewildered this week.

The coach of the Pepperdine women’s volleyball team has reason to feel confused after the Waves did an abrupt about-face last weekend, losing all three of their matches at the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo tournament.

Pepperdine began the tournament on a roll. The Waves (9-4) had won their previous nine matches and were ranked 23rd in the American Volleyball Coaches Assn. poll, marking the first time Pepperdine had cracked the national top 25 since September, 1992. The 9-1 start was the program’s best since 1984.

But none of that seemed to matter last weekend. The Waves won only one of 10 games in matches against Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, UC Santa Barbara and Iowa State, not exactly the performance Matthies was hoping for heading into West Coast Conference play.

Pepperdine will open at Gonzaga on Friday night and will play at Portland on Saturday night.

“Who knows with sports?” said Matthies, trying to explain the Waves’ collapse. “Look at the Angels. We just had a bad weekend all the way around. I was as surprised as anyone else.

“Anything that could go wrong went wrong. We couldn’t [pass] the ball on the court. We couldn’t hit the ball on the court. I don’t know why. We had been playing so well. We just kind of struggled. We started pressing, then we started playing worse. We just never got in any kind of rhythm.”

At worst, Matthies thought Pepperdine would win two of its three matches, with only 18th-ranked Santa Barbara standing in the way of the Waves winning their third tournament title this month.

In retrospect, Matthies believes she was partly to blame for her team’s lackluster effort. With Pepperdine having already played tournaments in Texas and Montana, Matthies said it might have been better if she had not scheduled a third tournament the week before the start of conference play.

“Maybe it was just one tournament too many,” she said. “Maybe we should have made this last weekend a little easier. As a coach, I need to remember that. Before coming into conference, we need a break. We’ve been playing a lot of matches all over the country. Mentally and physically, I think we’re just a little spent.”

In an effort to remedy the situation, Matthies gave her team a day off Monday. That left Pepperdine with three days of practice this week in preparation for matches against Gonzaga and Portland, opponents that don’t appear threatening on paper but proved troublesome for the Waves in 1994.

Pepperdine was 4-1 in conference play last season before losing five-game matches on the road to Gonzaga and Portland, effectively eliminating the Waves from title contention. Pepperdine ended up finishing fourth for the second consecutive season.

Although Gonzaga and Portland began the week with records of 2-13 and 5-8, respectively, Matthies acknowledged that Pepperdine can’t afford to overlook any conference opponent, especially on the road.

“They’re tough to play in their own comfort zone,” Matthies said.

Matthies knows all about comfort zones. Pepperdine used to operate in one of its own in the West Coast Conference, winning six of the first seven WCC titles from 1985 to ’91. The Waves won 44 consecutive conference matches from 1988 to ‘92, the year their dominance finally began to fade with a third-place finish.

Matthies, in her 13th season as Pepperdine coach, says it’s unfair to compare her recent teams to the ones in the late 1980s because of the strides women’s volleyball has made across the country.

“Volleyball has changed so much in the last 10 years,” she said. “The records that were made in the ‘80s are probably not attainable now because there is so much parity. I don’t care who you are--UCLA, Stanford. Everyone is going to get beat. I think it’s wonderful. Our conference is that way.”

Pepperdine’s cumulative conference record is 115-21, but in the last three seasons it’s 25-17. The Waves were picked third in a preseason coaches’ poll, behind defending champion Loyola Marymount and 1994 runner-up San Diego. Pepperdine will play host to Loyola on Oct. 7.

Matthies considers her youthful team--the Waves have only one senior--a legitimate contender for the conference title this season as well as in future campaigns.

Standouts include outside hitters Nicole Sanderson, an athletic sophomore from Australia, and Ann Windes, a junior from Manhattan Beach. Also contributing to the youth movement is Anna Witkowski, a freshman middle blocker from Running Springs, Calif., who leads the team in kill percentage.

“We have a strong nucleus of young kids who are playing really, really well,” Matthies said. “I don’t know where we’ll be at the end. We hope to be at the top of the conference. But I’m enjoying my team. I’m happy, and that’s a big part of it. We have a good time up here.”

Even after last weekend’s breakdown?

“That was just a little blip on the radar screen,” Matthies said, laughing. “Hopefully, anyway.”