With a top-10 national ranking, a 19-8 regular season record that tied for the program’s most wins since 1998 and a sweep of the No. 3 team in the country, the men’s volleyball team could have seen this season as a huge success. But it was hard not to feel a little disappointed when the Cardinal walked off the Maples Pavilion floor after a bitter fifth-set loss to No. 5 Long Beach two weekends ago in the first round of the MPSF Tournament.
The loss ostensibly ended Stanford’s postseason hopes because only one at-large bid is available for the four-team NCAA Tournament, and it was unlikely that the Cardinal (19-9, 15-7 MPSF) was going to snag it after being upset on its home court in the first round of the MPSF Tournament. (No. 1 USC ended up losing to No. 3 UC-Santa Barbara in the MPSF Final, and was awarded the at-large bid.)
Although there was certainly no shame in losing to a plucky Long Beach State squad (15-14, 12-10) that seemingly had Stanford’s number all season long—the 49ers swept all three meetings in 2011—there were certainly bitter feelings considering how close the Cardinal came to finding that elusive spark.
Head coach John Kosty said all season that any team looking to win a national championship required a solid end to the regular season, and then needed to get hot in the playoffs. He attributed last year’s national championship to a magical run at the perfect time. This season, Stanford was its hottest just before spring break, when it won five straight matches, possibly peaking too soon.
Last year—when the Cardinal actually managed to complete the daunting holy grail of MPSF play by winning the regular season title, MPSF Tournament title and the national title—Stanford had a couple of three-game win streaks towards the end of conference play that demonstrated how well the team was playing. This year, after the five-match win streak, the team never found a groove and alternated wins and losses in seven straight matches before a small two-match streak entering the MPSF Tournament.
It’s impossible to point to any of the players individually, because the statistics speak for themselves. Junior outside hitter Brad Lawson and junior libero Erik Shoji repeated as AVCA First Team All-Americans, with both racking up some impressive statistics: Lawson posted 455 kills to go with a .331 hitting percentage, and Shoji had 2.62 digs per set.
Junior setter Evan Barry had gigantic shoes to fill with the graduation of AVCA Player of the Year and First Team All-American setter Kawika Shoji, Erik’s older brother. But Barry did exactly as Kosty predicted when he handed him the keys to the Cardinal offense, setting a very efficient game to the tune of 1272 assists and the third-highest assist-to-set ratio in the conference.
The vaunted freshman class that Kosty brought in also contributed immediately—outside hitter Brian Cook was third on the team in kills with 179 and Steven Irvin played in almost every match and was sixth in kills. That doesn’t even include freshman middle blocker Eric Mochalski, who finished as one of just five Cardinal players to appear in all 28 matches, starting 27 of them. Mochalski was fourth on the team in kills and had a .451 hitting percentage while leading the team in total blocks.
He was also selected to the MPSF All-Freshman Team, joining senior outside hitter Spencer McLachlin, Erik Shoji and Lawson in earning all-conference honors. In his last season on the Farm, the tri-captain McLachlin put up some big numbers, finishing 17th in the country in kills per set (3.79) and 27th in hitting percentage (.309). He also managed to stay healthy all season.
McLachlin will also leave his mark as one of the six members of the winningest class in Stanford history. With 81 victories over four years, the class of 2011 that includes Ian Connolly, Garrett Dobbs, Charley Henrikson, Jordan Inafuku, Max Halvorson and McLachlin broke the record previously held by the classes of 1995 and 1997.
Two of the biggest of those victories came early in the season, when then-No. 2 BYU came to town looking to knock off the then-No. 4 Cardinal on its home floor. The Cougars were sent back to Provo, Utah with their tails between their legs after Stanford rode through two nights of rowdy crowds in Burnham Pavilion to an upset sweep, generating some early momentum for the year.
But from there the road got rougher, as Stanford didn’t adjust well to the time change and came out very flat in the road opener at Hawaii (which resulted in a 3-0 loss), and then lost a tough match at Long Beach at the end of January as it got further into a wild road swing that saw the Cardinal play seven matches in seven cities and cover 9,227 miles over a three-week period.
It didn’t help that most of those matches were against MPSF opponents, and Stanford plays in the country’s most grueling conference—at one point, all 12 MPSF teams were ranked in the top-15 nationally, and the year ended with the MPSF holding down the top seven spots and 11 of the top-15.
The MPSF Tournament was a great example of just how competitive and unpredictable the conference was. No. 1 USC lost on its home court in the tournament final to seventh-seeded UC-Santa Barbara, which also upset No. 2 BYU on the road as well as sixth-seeded Long Beach–of all the matches in the tournament, only three times did the higher-seeded team win.
At the beginning of the season, members of the team decided that this year’s rallying cry would be “first to first,” playing off of last season’s “worst to first” motto that signified Stanford’s rise from a last-place team to the NCAA championship in just four years.
With another top-ranked recruiting class that includes All-American 6-foot-7 middle blocker Sean Kemper and just one starter graduating, Kosty has plenty of reason to be optimistic that the Cardinal could return to the NCAA Tournament next year. “Sixth to first” doesn’t have the same ring as a slogan, but it’ll have to do.