The No. 8 CSUN Matadors (15-6) suffered a devastating 3-2 loss to No. 18 UC Santa Barbara (10-10) on Friday night at home following their tough three game road trip. The Matadors are now 0-3 in conference games and sit at the bottom of the Big West standings.
CSUN coach Theo Edwards spoke about the team’s two-game losing streak.
“It’s more about us than anybody else. So we’ve got to figure out how to get our offense going and find our confidence a bit,” Edwards said. “We ran from the moment at the end of the match and that’s the first time we’ve done that this year, so we’ve got some things to learn.”
The Matadors found themselves in an early hole to start the first set of the match, which forced Edwards to call an early timeout after being down 13-7. The team responded with a huge run late in the set, but CSUN dropped the first set 25-23.
CSUN is typically a very disciplined squad, but uncharacteristic mistakes distracted the team at the beginning of the match. The team had five service errors and eight attack errors, while they only hit .074% in the first set.
Coming out of the second set, the Matadors had much more focus, but UCSB didn’t back down from the challenge.
The two teams were locked in a back-and-forth battle with 10 ties and four lead changes, with the Matadors pulling out the second set in a 25-21 victory.
CSUN’s libero, Chris Karnezis, explained what changed for CSUN going into that set.
“We ended the first set well, and we just said to continue that and keep going. We know we can play some good volleyball when we’re on, so we just needed to ride the highs and limit the lows,” Karnezis said.
The third set was where the Matadors finally started to find their rhythm and got into an offensive groove. CSUN opened up their biggest lead of the game, five points and finished off the set 25-20, hitting .464% with 15 total kills and three service aces.
However, UCSB completely shifted the game’s momentum with a clutch performance in the fourth set that ended 31-29 and tied the match 2-2. The Gauchos continued that dominant performance into the final set and finished off CSUN 15-11.
Despite the loss, Edwards is confident that his team can bounce back once they tweak some things.
“I think we saw that we can beat this team. The reality is that we need to execute and figure out what we’re doing from a camaraderie perspective,” Edwards said.
Karnezis added that the team has to be disciplined if they want to get back to their winning ways.
“We’ve just got to play a complete game. It feels like we’re unbeatable in parts of the game, and then we just slack off and we’re not completely there,” Karnezis said. “ We can’t be lackadaisical and expect to win.”
The Matadors will take on UCSB for the second game in their season series on Saturday, March 29, at 7 p.m. at the Thunderdome. The game will be broadcast on ESPN+.
