April 6, 2001
Stanford, Calif. - Stanford's Curt Toppel notched a match-high 22 kills en route to a 3-0 Cardinal victory over No. 8 UC Santa Barbara. Game scores were 30-25, 30-23, 30-28.
The Cardinal improve to 12-7 overall, 8-6 in league play while the Gauchos fall to 11-10 overall, 4-10 in the MPSF.
Stanford hit a stellar .419 for the match and held a 36-20 advantage over UCSB in digs as well.
After handling the Gauchos in games one and two, Stanford found themselves trailing most of the time in game three. Down 12-18, UCSB had a service error followed by three quick points by the Cardinal to close the gap to 16-18. But Santa Barbara stormed back to take a 22-17 lead. Three straight Gaucho errors and a block assist b y Marcus Skacel and Kyle Strache pulled Stanford to within one at 21-22.
After a UCSB kill, the Cardinal would string together four points to take the lead at 25-23. Santa Barbara would tie it up at 25-all with a block assist. Stanford took a 28-26 lead on a kill by Curt Toppel and a Gaucho service error would get the Cardinal to game and match point at 29-28. Billy Strickland's kill would seal the game and the match for Stanford with a 30-28 win in game three.
Skacel added 15 kills and a match-high 11 digs for the Cardinal while Brett Youngberg added 11 kills (11-1-13) with five blocks on the night. Strickland added eight digs and two blocks.
The Gauchos were led by Alex Leinert's 15 kills and Dave Kohl's 10 kills.
Stanford is next in action tomorrow night against No. 13 CS Northridge in Maples Pavilion at 7 p.m.
No. 5 Stanford def. No. 8 UC Santa Barbara, 3-0.