Fresh Off the Block

Friday, January 23

Riverside

7:00 PM

California Baptist University

UC San Diego

UCSD

California Baptist

Photo by: Lauren Garcia

1/23/2015 9:23:00 PM | Men's Volleyball

Box Score

By: Andrew Shortall, Asst. Sports Information Director

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Each victory is sweet, but when that win comes with some history, it's even sweeter.

Enrique de Diego Garcia helped make California Baptist University's first home win of the season over UC San Diego (25-21, 25-13, 25-11) monumentus. The freshman tallied 16 block assists on the night to tie the CBU record for blocks in a single match and set the MPSF Conference record for blocks in a match since the rally-scoring era began in 2002. It is the most any Lancer has ever accumulated in a three-set contest, with Artur Kusio being the only one other player to get 16 blocks in a match. However, Kusio had the luxury of five sets to do back on April 13, 2004.

With the win, the Lancers improve to 3-4, 1-3 in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation and UCSD falls to 1-5, 0-4. CBU will look to translate its success from Friday over into Saturday when it hosts third-ranked UC Irvine at 7 p.m. in a rematch of Tuesday's four-set loss (25-13, 30-28, 22-25, 25-14) to the Anteaters in Irvine.

"It's always good to get the win, we played a disciplined game and now we're getting ready for tomorrow," outside hitter Rocky DeLyon said. "We have to get our heads on straight again because it's a tougher team and we have to be ready."

If CBU can replicate what it did Friday, it should have no problem. Obviously, the Lancers were on defensively with the Tritons being held to a negative hitting percentage of -.091 (22 kills and 29 errors on 77 attempts). CBU also recorded 22 team blocks – more than its 20 digs. Kevin Kustura led the Lancers with seven digs, while DeLyon had five and Jonathan Tuttle had four.

"We just did what we did in practice and were disciplined," DeLyon said. "We didn't take anything lightly, so it led to some good blocks."

Freshman setter Zachary Melcher had CBU hitting at a .368 percentage (31-10-57), with 23 assists and seven blocks on the night. DeLyon had a match-high eight kills and one error on 11 attempts for a .636 percentage. Tuttle also had seven kills and two errors on 11 swings for a .455 mark, while blocking seven balls. Giovanni Llinas Rosa also had seven kills on the night, along with six blocks.

Even with all the success, CBU did not start out the way it may have hoped, as it found itself down 13-10 in the first set. A Tuttle kill and three UCSD attacking errors gave CBU a 14-13 edge and it grew to an 18-16 advantage after an ace and kill from Tuttle bookended a 4-1 run.

The Tritons managed to stay within a point of the Lancers at 21-20, but CBU closed out the set on a 4-1 run with kills from Tuttle and Daniel Maurer (four kills, four blocks) highlighting the spurt.

Things changed moving forward, with the Lancers taking advantages of 9-1 and 16-4 in the second and third sets, respectively, to give them plenty of cushion for the victory via sweep.

"I guess it was just a mindset, we weren't playing our game," DeLyon said of the turnaround. "When we take care of our stuff we have a pretty good team."