No. 6 BYU made quick work of No. 15 UC Santa Barbara Friday night at the Smith Fieldhouse, sweeping the Gauchos to hand them their first such loss of the season.
The Cougars won by set scores of 25-21, 25-20 and 25-22.
The win is BYU’s fifth straight over UC Santa Barbara and gets the Provo school back on the winning track after it dropped four consecutive matches prior to Friday evening.
“I’m proud of the guys,” BYU coach Shawn Olmstead said. “(It was a) tough two weeks where the guys gave it their all and came up short … those weekends, but for them to come back and rebound, that’s what they got to do.”
The Cougars remained in control from start to finish Friday, looking more like the team that rose to a top five national ranking before the challenges of the last two weekends.
BYU didn’t make as many mistakes as it had during its losing streak. Instead, the home team took advantage of UC Santa Barbara’s mistakes, particularly in the first set where the Cougars stayed clean from the service line compared to eight service errors by the Gauchos.
“I don’t expect that Santa Barbara is going to miss that many serves,” Olmstead said. “Us having no missed serves (in the first set) is good, but … that usually means that we can be a little more aggressive. … You’re always just trying to improve that. (Serving is) one skill where we’ve got total control over it, so we got to put pressure on the opponents.”
Olmstead’s squad stayed ahead of the Gauchos for the majority of the initial set, propelled by a 10-4 run in the early stages. BYU held things fairly even from there, keeping far enough out front to earn the one set advantage.
In the second set, the Cougars took their first lead at 9-8 and never trailed again. UC Santa Barbara kept things tight but BYU eventually began pulling away late, scoring six of the final nine points to take the set and put the Gauchos on the brink of suffering their first sweep of the season.
BYU finished UC Santa Barbara off in the third set with another comfortable win despite the Gauchos closing the gap as the match neared its end.
The Cougars led by as many as six points before seeing their lead get trimmed to two. An Olmstead timeout and a kill from senior outside hitter Luke Benson ended the night, however.
“I tried to do a better job … of calling a few timeouts,” Olmstead said of how he attempted to combat the struggle his team has faced of holding onto leads over the past few weeks.
“When we had those four or five point leads down the stretch, I called a timeout pretty quickly if they were able to side out and then score. (I) just tried to tell our guys, ‘Hey, let’s regroup,’ kind of get back to what we were focusing on and what we need to do in that rotation specifically.”
Whatever adjustments the Cougars made since suffering their fourth setback worked. BYU sophomore outside hitter Teilon-Jonathan Tufuga led the way Friday, securing three digs, two blocks and nine kills with a .389 hitting percentage.
Despite the successful night, Tufuga remained focused on getting better.
“There’s always room for improvement,” he said. “I think a lot of guys know that, but a win is a win and we’re grateful.”
BYU will look to perform even better when it faces off against UC Santa Barbara again Saturday evening at the Smith Fieldhouse beginning at 7 p.m.