Time for Playoff-Bound Northridge to Dig Deep in Practice

It’s almost that time of the year for the Cal State Northridge men’s volleyball team.

Playoff time, that is.

With two regular-season matches left--against Pepperdine on Saturday and UC Santa Barbara on Tuesday--the Matadors already have earned a postseason berth.

This marks the seventh consecutive year Northridge has qualified for the playoffs, an impressive feat considering the Matadors compete in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, the nation’s toughest conference.

Year after year the relentless Matadors chip away at the competition until they earn a postseason berth.

Northridge kicked off this season ranked No. 9 in the nation and topped out at No. 3. This week the Matadors are ranked fifth with a 15-9 overall record, 10-7 in the MPSF.

The Matadors are third among the seven teams in the MPSF’s Mountain Division. Defending NCAA champion UCLA, ranked No. 3, leads the pack. Fourth-ranked Santa Barbara is second.

It appears that Northridge’s first playoff match, on April 20, will be at second-ranked Long Beach State, the Pacific Division’s No. 2 team.

The Matadors are 0-2 against the 49ers this season, but Northridge won the previous six meetings.

“Our biggest roadblock is the mental aspect, really believing in each other and in ourselves,” said junior outside hitter Collin Smith, who was chosen to the all-tournament team last week at the UCLA tournament. “Physically I know we have what it takes.”

Another playoff scenario has Northridge playing host to No. 6-ranked Stanford on April 20. But that will happen only if the Matadors win their last two matches and Brigham Young sweeps a doubleheader against Santa Barbara this weekend.

“UCSB should sweep BYU, though,” Northridge Coach John Price said. “The only way we can place second is if BYU helps us and I don’t know that they really can.”

Price isn’t terribly concerned about it, though. Once the playoffs arrive, it doesn’t make much difference who and where you play, he says.

After all, the Matadors have proven they can beat the best. They already have upset higher ranked teams such as Stanford and Santa Barbara and are perfectly capable of doing it again.

“One of our biggest problems is that we go through a phase where we play hard then go into cruise mode if we get a big-enough lead,” outside hitter Chad Strickland said. “We need to play strong and steady at all times. I think we’re at a point where we can.”

The Matadors improved as the season progressed, but Price remains conservative--he calls it “realistic”--when assessing his team.

“We’ve made big strides and we’re good enough, but we’re not good enough right now to survive the playoffs,” he said. “The thing is, we have a different guy on every night and the bad side of that is that there’s a different guy off every night.

“We have yet to put together a match when everyone played well. A lot of it is lack of experience. We’re not the most-experienced team in the world.”

But the Matadors have a lot of heart and a roster full of players who were not recruited by traditional powers such as UCLA, Stanford and Pepperdine.

They play hard and perform as well as some of the nation’s top recruits.

Strickland needs 33 digs to become the school’s single-season leader. At one point he had a 16-match streak of reaching double figures in kills. During that stretch he had 316 kills, including one 30-kill performance and eight matches of 20 or more.

A sophomore from Hart High, Strickland leads the Matadors with 396 kills, 28 aces and 231 digs.

Smith has 387 kills, 199 defensive saves and 53 blocks. Senior middle blocker Dirk Schlueter, a German in his first season of collegiate volleyball, leads the team with 96 blocks. Last week he came within two blocks of breaking the school match record of 15.

Walk-on setter Dan Nash, a transfer from Pierce College, has done an excellent job running the offense. He ranks seventh in the NCAA with an average of 16.5 assists.

“The big question for us now is are we going to click before the playoffs,” Price said. “We’re going to bust our butts the next two weeks and hope it clicks.”

At a time when most teams are worn out and taking it easy in practice, the Matadors are doing the opposite.

Since a March 3 loss to Pacific, Price and his assistants have conducted intense, three-hour daily practices.

“We’re pretty beat up, but we need to practice hard to keep an edge,” Price said. “We can’t afford not to. We’re not good enough to do that.”

But the Matadors are consistent, at least enough to make the playoffs the past seven years.