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Northridge Finds Only Middle Ground

TIMES STAFF WRITER

“Mediocre” was the word Cal State Northridge men’s volleyball Coach John Price used to describe his team’s four-game loss to Pepperdine in a Mountain Pacific Sports Federation opener Friday night at Firestone Fieldhouse.

And he was talking about the game the Matadors won.

“I felt like we played poorly in the first two games, then we played mediocre in the third and Pepperdine played poorly, and then in the fourth game it seemed like we quit,” Price said after a 15-8, 15-8, 11-15, 15-4 defeat.

“Maybe we’re just not good enough. We knew what we had to do, we just couldn’t do it. We couldn’t execute on the blocks and serves.”

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The result was predictable, though.

The Matadors (2-1, 0-1 in conference), whose matches in the Santa Barbara tournament were best-of-three and thus not included in their record, are still without middle blocker Jason Hughes, who is academically ineligible pending completion of a class. And the No. 8 Waves (2-1, 1-0) were higher ranked than the No. 9 Matadors, anyway.

Price said he expects Northridge to play much better when the teams meet again Feb. 5 at Matador Gym. Problem is, he expects the Waves to be playing much better, too.

“It was really sloppy on both sides of the net,” Price said. “When we meet Feb. 5, I expect it will be a much different match. The outcome may not be different, but it will be a different match.”

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Pepperdine Coach Marv Dunphy, whose team rebounded from blowing a 2-0 lead in a five-game loss to Long Beach State on Saturday night, agreed with Price’s assessment.

“I think on both sides there were some unforced errors that neither of us will do down the road,” Dunphy said. “At least we better not do them down the road.”

One of Northridge’s main problems was serving errors. The Matadors had 15, but “it seemed like we missed 100,” Price said. Many of those were in the critical second game, in which Northridge blew a 7-1 lead.

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Just before Pepperdine put away that game, Price replaced freshman setter Junior Mosones with sophomore Dan Fisher. Fisher was expected to be the Matadors’ setter, but Northridge has been having such trouble hitting lately that Price moved Fisher to opposite hitter for the first two games. Fisher had been an opposite hitter at Hawaii before transferring to Northridge.

Kevin Barnett (24 kills), George Roumain (21) and Peter Kodacsy (15) did most of the damage for Pepperdine.

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