Volleyball
The Oregon volleyball players have said all season that if they play up to their potential, they will have an opportunity to win their first Pacific-10 Conference match of the season.
Two things stand in the Ducks’ way: No. 13 UCLA on Friday, followed Saturday by the No. 1 team in the nation, USC.
If history has anything to say about it, the Ducks won’t know what hit them.
Oregon has beaten UCLA just once — in 1987 — en route to a 17-11 season for the Ducks. Since then, the Bruins have earned a 28-match winning streak against the Ducks, an impressive streak considering it has spanned 14 seasons and three Oregon head coaches.
Then there’s USC. The Trojans have been just as unforgiving to the Ducks in recent years, defeating Oregon in 23-straight contests. Overall, Oregon has handled USC better than they have UCLA, although the Ducks still trail in the series, 29-6.
But with a new season comes a new sense of optimism for ending the 26-match conference losing streak that has plagued the Ducks. Oregon has the Bruins and Trojans well within its sights.
“We’re looking to play hard and bring back the fire that this team controls,” senior Lindsay Closs said.
At the core of Oregon’s resurgence in energy and vigor stands the team’s freshmen — Kelly Russell, Jodi Bell, Dariam Acevedo and Jaclyn Jones. The group has provided an offensive spark to a team that lacked the essentials to be successful in the past.
“They’re phenomenal,” head coach Carl Ferreira said. “Part of it is the fun process of having a program grow through recruiting. You identify the type of athletes that you feel it is going to take to succeed at this level.
“For them to succeed at this level right off the bat is the talent level they bring to the program. It’s not necessarily as much as what you’ve taught them to start with. That’s just the recruitment of quality players. They have definitely helped influence the program in a significant way.”
Naturally, playing the cream of the Pac-10 crop would seem to be an intimidating factor for some of Oregon’s youngsters. But according to Bell, it should be just another match.
“I just look across the net and play as if it was anyone else, whether it was Washington, Washington State, or Stanford,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. You just go out there and play.”
The Bruins, who Oregon took to four games last season at McArthur Court before the Ducks eventually tasted defeat, are 3-1 in their last four matches, although the single loss was to Stanford. UCLA has history on its side with head coach Andy Banachowski, who is in his 36th collegiate season and has an all-time record of 929-227.
The Bruins also feature a balanced squad, led by senior Lauren Fendrick, who needs just 52 digs to become the 13th UCLA player of all time to reach the 1,000-dig plateau.
But to the Ducks, the faces are nameless and the teams recordless. Oregon treats each week as a separate entity.
“We’re in the middle of the season,” Ferreira said. “We focus on this week the same way we focused on last week, which is the same way we focused on the first week of competition in September. You don’t change anything you’re doing. I do think you end up making a transition, and I think the transition is some of the things you are able to do in your non-conference schedule are not necessarily some of the things you can do successfully in conference.”
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