John Wooden and his dominant UCLA basketball teams of the 1960s and 1970s made Pauley Pavilion famous. And the historic arena holds special memories for the BYU men's volleyball program.
Pauley Pavilion is where the Cougars claimed their first and only NCAA title a little more than one year ago. It's also where they open first-round Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament play Saturday (8 p.m.) against UCLA.
"We've talked about it a lot, that we'll be sitting in the same locker room as last year," said senior outside hitter Casey Jennings, one of the few remaining Cougars who actually played in the Final Four.
He remembers well that day in May 1999 when BYU defeated Long Beach State to clinch the championship. A large and vocal crowd of Cougar fans gave BYU a definite homecourt advantage. "It was awesome," Jennings said. "It gets our blood going thinking about that. This weekend, we have something to defend."
Of course, things have not gone as smoothly as they did last season, when BYU posted a 30-1 record en route to its crown. The Cougars entered the 2000 campaign with almost an entirely new lineup that included players who had been on BYU's second team and faced the first team every day in practice. "We were more of the sparring partner," Jennings
said. This year, they are the starters.
Still, the Cougars (18-8 overall, 13-6 in the MPSF) are ranked sixth in the nation and are back in the championship hunt. They will take on the Bruins (24-5, 14-5), who are ranked No. 4 and have won 17 national championships.
BYU coach Carl McGown doesn't spend much time reminiscing about what his team accomplished last year and isn't about to turn nostalgic on this return trip to Los Angeles. "This is a different team," he said. "We're off on another task."
McGown is pleased with the way his team has improved, knowing going into the season an encore performance was not likely. "I didn't know what we expected this season," he said. "We played hard and got better. We didn't know what was going to happen in terms of wins and losses."
Despite having won the national championship, because BYU has had almost an entirely new cast of characters this season, opposing teams haven't necessarily been gunning for the Cougars, McGown said. "We're a brand new team with six new players starting. If we could have returned some players, it would have been a different story."
One notion floating around California is that BYU was lucky to win it all last year, Jennings said. The Cougars were only the second non-California team in history to take the NCAA title.
"People in California tell members of my old (LDS) ward it was a fluke. They say, 'BYU won it? What's up with that?' " said Jennings, who hails from Huntington Beach. "We opened some eyes last year . . . Nobody's happy to play us, but no one is out to get us because we're not the same guys. We're a threat rather than a target."
UCLA knows how good BYU is. Although the Bruins defeated the Cougars twice this season in Pauley Pavilion, BYU came within two points of forcing a fifth game in both matches.
"When we played them (on March 1-2), we were on one leg. Nobody was healthy," Jennings said. "We all had injuries or the flu. And we almost beat them anyway. We're all healthy now and we're fired up. We want them bad."
For the Cougars to pull the upset, they are going to have to win the serve-receive battle with the Bruins, McGown said. "They have very good jump-servers. Casey Jennings, Joaquin Acosta and Mike Wall will all be exposed to their jump serves."
The Bruins boast All-America setter Brandon Taliaferro, who is the school's career assists and ace leader.
"We're going to have to serve tough," Jennings said. "Me and Joaquin are going to have to do our jobs. I want the pressure on me. I need to play well."
The winner of tonight's match will meet the winner of Loyola Marymount-Long Beach State in the semifinals next week at a site yet to be determined.