Men's volleyball

Trojans quickly dispose of UCSD

By Ron Ognar
Assistant Sports Editor

With its huge matchup at No. 7 Long Beach State on Tuesday looming, the No. 14 USC men's volleyball team might have had a tendency to look past a last-place UC San Diego team in its Thursday matchup at UCSD.
But the Trojans were focused from the get-go and quickly disposed of the Tritons, 15-10, 15-7, 15-5, in 1:25.
USC will now have to focus on taking down a talented 49ers team as the team attempts to qualify for the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation playoffs.
In the UCSD match, the Trojans (11-14 overall, 7-11 in the MPSF) hit .454 as a team while holding the Tritons (4-18, 0-17) to a .198 percentage.
USC closed out the match with a .607 game-three hitting percentage. Meanwhile, the Trojan defense held the Tritons to .160 percentage in game three.
Compiling 10 aces and 16 service errors, USC rebounded from its poor serving performance against San Diego State on Wednesday. Meanwhile, UCSD had only two aces and 11 service errors.
The Trojans defense held every Triton player to less than 10 kills. UCSD junior middle blocker Devon Jeffcoat did manage to hit .750, with nine kills and no hitting errors.
For the fourth match in a row, freshman outside hitter Eli Fairfield led USC in kills. Fairfield had a match-high 17 kills while hitting .560.
Fellow freshman outside hitter Trevor Julian had 11 kills and hit .471.