PROVO, Utah — In an intense top-10 matchup in the Smith Fieldhouse, No. 6 Pepperdine picked up a 3-1 (25-21, 19-25, 25-23, 25-15) victory over No. 9 BYU men’s volleyball Friday night.
The win puts Pepperdine at 7-0 in MPSF play, to maintain the Waves’ No. 1 spot and dropped BYU to 4-3 in conference play.
"Credit to Pepperdine. It's tough to play here, but it didn't seem to impact them," BYU head coach Shawn Olmstead said. "It felt like our guys were trying to do too much. Pepperdine is always a really, really good blocking team, and after a few swings from a few of our guys, it felt like the rest of them were really impacted, trying to overdo things. Once you saw us hitting the way we need to hit, dong things correctly, it got close there."
Tyler Herget racked up 37 assists in the match for the Cougars. His 29th assist gave him 2500 for his career at BYU. He’s just the sixth player in the BYU men’s volleyball rally-scoring era to hit that mark.
Teilon-Jonathan Tufuga had a career-high-tying four aces in the match.
Connor Oldani led BYU with 11 kills, Tafuga had eight, Moser had eight, AJ Cottle had seven and Gavin Chambers had five.
The Cougars hit .226 in the match with 21 attack errors. Pepperdine hit .417 with 10 attack errors.
Set 1
The Waves came out red hot, scoring the first four points of the match. After a Pepperdine hitting error, the Cougars came back with an ace from Tufuga, and BYU responded.
The size of Pepperdine was apparent early, with three of Pepperdine’s first seven points coming off of blocks.
The teams alternated points for a while, with Pepperdine maintaining its three-to-four point cushion until a 5-0 run, highlighted by two Cougar blocks right before the media timeout, gave BYU it’s first lead of the night, 15-14.
Pepperdine answered out of the timeout with a 6-1 run to get that cushion right back and take a 20-16 lead.
Pepperdine finished off the set at 25-21. The waves hit .375 in the set and held the Cougars to a negative percentage at -.037.
Set 2
The Cougars started the second set with another hitting error but regathered themselves to trade points with Pepperdine. Neither team was able to string two consecutive points together until an Oldani kill was followed up by a Tufuga ace to make it 9-8 for the Cougars.
BYU got to 10 kills in the second set in their first 14 points. The Cougars only had nine kills total in the first set.
The teams went right back to trading points after the Cougars went ahead.
Neither team held a two-point lead until BYU went up on a Pepperdine attack error at 16-14. The Cougars built that lead to 18-14 on a Herget ace. BYU got to 21-15 after a booming Moser block.
BYU evened up the match with a second set victory, 25-19, as a Pepperdine service error ended the set.
Set 3
Once again, for the third straight set, the teams kept things tight early.
Back-to-back aces by Tufuga put the Cougars up 11-9.
Pepperdine went up 14-13. BYU went up 15-14.
The Cougars built the lead to 19-17 on back-to back kills by Oldani and Tufuga and went up 21-18 on another Oldani kill. That would be the only three-point lead in the set.
Pepperdine battled back with its first block of the set to tie things at 21-21, then a kill from the Waves made it 22-21, forcing a BYU timeout.
BYU came out with an Oldani kill to tie things back up. The teams traded points until a BYU service error gave Pepperdine set point. Then an ace from the Waves gave them the tight 25-23 set win.
Set 4
Trevor Herget subbed in for Moser early in the fourth set and immediately contributed with a block assist.
The Waves got out to a 9-5 lead on an ace that led to a BYU timeout. They built that lead to 14-7 on a block, forcing another timeout.
BYU strung together back-to-back points out of the timeout.
Tennison Lighthall’s first kill of the match after subbing into the fourth set made the score 15-10, but the Waves would go right back onto a run after that.
Pepperdine would take the fourth set 25-15 to take the match 3-1.
Up Next
These two teams face each other again tomorrow night back at the Smith Fieldhouse.