Pepperdine Playoff Bound After Sweeping Aside BYU

The suddenly soaring Pepperdine men’s volleyball team can set its sights on the playoffs, following a resounding 15-10, 15-7, 15-3 sweep of BYU in a Mountain Pacific Sports Federation match Saturday night at Firestone Fieldhouse.

The Waves (14-10, 9-9 in MPSF play), who defeated BYU (8-12, 7-10) for the second time in as many nights, assured themselves a berth in the conference playoffs, which begin April 20 and include eight teams.

Junior outside hitter Kevin Barnett (14 kills) and freshmen Peter Kodacsy and George Roumain, who each had 10 kills, helped make sure Pepperdine will be one of those involved.

“Last night, we played really good against them,” Kodacsy said. “We knew we just had to keep that up.”

Actually, the Waves did even better than the night before, when they needed four games to finish off the Cougars.

“We’ve played in streaks a lot this season, in stretches of points and in games, and it was nice to see us put it all together in two whole matches in a row,” Barnett said. “I think we’re really coming together here at the end of the year.”

The Waves certainly were in command Saturday.

Leading in the third game, 3-2, Pepperdine used strong blocking, several BYU hitting errors and a rotation violation by the Cougars to score the next 11 points en route to the victory.

Pepperdine won the second game by running off seven consecutive points in one stretch and scoring nine of the last 10.

For BYU, Steve Hinds had 13 kills, and Ryan Millar, from Highland High, finished with six kills, two solo blocks and four digs but also had seven errors.

Adam White, from Royal High, added five kills, one ace and a dig.