After not playing in the first two sets, freshman outside hitter Cooper Keane came off the bench and lit a spark for the Trojans. Keane finished with a career-high 12 kills on 19 attempts in just two sets.
“He was the answer for what we needed at that position for our team,” USC head coach Jeff Nygaard said about Keane’s performance. “Cooper was ready, he dialed it in and it was a really nice performance from a freshman.”
In their second game of a back-to-back matchup against UC Irvine, the Trojans fell short to the Anteaters in four sets (20-25, 23-25, 25-23, 25-23), taking their first loss of the season. UCI pin hitters senior William D’Arcy and freshman Andrej Jokanovic put up a combined 36 kills, 11 digs and six blocks for the Anteaters.
The Trojans did lose their chance at an undefeated season, however. UC Irvine was the same team that ended USC’s winning streak last year as well, when the Trojans had the same starting record of 8-0.
The Trojans went down two sets early in the match and that’s when Nygaard turned to Keane, who is averaging 0.67 kills per set. Nygaard’s decision paid off with Keane putting up six kills in the third set and willing USC to a 25-23 set win.
Before tonight, Keane had a total of eight career kills and after catching fire, he nearly matched that same number in only one set. He was also efficient defensively, finishing with five digs and two blocks.
Keane’s outstanding performance is a testament to how deep this Trojan team is. With bench players like Keane and 10 kills from sophomore middle blocker Tyler Robinson, who is filling in for last week’s MPSF Defensive Player of the Week, junior middle blocker Wesley Smith, the Trojans’ season is far from over after the loss.
“We’ve got a deep bench and so it’s a lot of game experience,” Nygaard said. “A lot of development, which in the long haul, is going to be good for us.”
Despite having four Trojans with double-digit kills and hitting an impressive .417 percentage as a team, they couldn’t pull off the reverse sweep. Their usual superstar senior outside hitter Dillion Klein finished with a team-high 23 kills, marking his 11th career game with 20 or more kills.
“Hitting .417 as a team, given how we started, if you told me we would lose hitting .417 I would have been a little surprised to hear that,” Nygaard said.
Despite rolling offensively with Keane and Klein, the Trojans struggled from the service line, committing 17 service errors while the Anteaters only had 12 errors along with seven aces.
“There’s quite a few things we can clean up on our side. I think we could do a better job with serving pressure as well as defensive effort,” Nygaard said. “But offensively, I saw a ton of great things that made me know we could side off with the best of them.”
USC has a long break until they face crosstown rival UCLA in the Battle of L.A. on March 3.