For the first time since its trying 2022 season, BYU left the Smith Fieldhouse defeated. After winning 18 straight matches in Provo, the third-longest home winning streak in program history, the No. 8 ranked Cougars fell to No. 7 UC Irvine in four sets.
The Anteaters won by set scores of 22-25, 27-25, 25-18, and 25-20.
“They deserved to win,” BYU coach Shawn Olmstead said. “And that’s unfortunate. … Especially when you’re here at home.”
BYU and UC Irvine split two matches in Southern California a season ago, making the Cougars winners over the Anteaters in five of the schools’ last six meetings heading into a pair of bouts this weekend. That trend was bucked Friday night when UC Irvine impressively took care of BYU in three consecutive sets to earn its first win in Provo since 2019.
“They were just significantly better than us,” a disappointed Olmstead said. “They were way more composed.”
It would have been hard to guess Friday’s outcome after the way things began. BYU started the initial set firing on all cylinders, taking a 12-6 lead and looking like it would run away with the first game. But UC Irvine came alive in the middle portion of the set, dominating the next few minutes and outscoring the Cougars 14-5. BYU regained momentum in the waning moments though, inserting senior serving specialist Jon Stanley behind the line where he helped the school complete a 4-0 run to close things out.
The second set was tight with neither team going ahead by more than three points and the score being equal on 15 different occasions. Still, the Cougars managed to take a two-point lead late, but couldn’t hold on to it, watching the Anteaters outscore them 8-4 down the stretch to tie the match up at one set each.
“We won the first set and then … we had chances there in the second,” Olmstead said. “The moment that those didn’t go our way, just the whole thing changed.”
The next set, UC Irvine scored three of its first four points on service aces, indicative of the dominant way it would take over the match. Tied at 9-9 it seemed it would be another neck and neck battle. However, from there the Anteaters outscored BYU 11-5, giving the Cougars little runway to make any sort of comeback.
Things didn’t get much better for BYU in the fourth set, as UC Irvine controlled things from start to finish and squelched every effort the Cougars and the Smith Fieldhouse crowd of 3,662 did to muster a resurgence. Again the Anteaters finished strong, scoring four of the final five points to pick up the massive road victory.
“They were aggressive and they were confident and we weren’t,” Olmstead said. “This one’s tough.”
UC Irvine played the aggressor for much of the evening, particularly from the service line. Despite missing on multiple serves, the Anteaters’ aggressive approach paid off to the tune of nine service aces compared to the Cougars’ two.
“They came into our place and out-served us significantly,” Olmstead said. “They’re a good serving team. I think we made them a really, really good serving team because half of those aces, if not more than half, were very easy serves that should never go down.”
BYU will get a chance to perform better tomorrow evening at the Smith Fieldhouse in a rematch with UC Irvine. The match will put an end to the school’s most grueling stretch of this year’s schedule as the Cougars play their sixth match in nine days.
Following Saturday, the Cougars will face just one more non-conference opponent, Long Island, before beginning MPSF play at home against Grand Canyon midway through February.