Stanford's men's volleyball squad got the 1996 season underway
tonight with a 15-3, 15-6, 15-1 win over UC-Santa Cruz in the
friendly confines of Burnham Pavilion.  The Banana Slugs looked like
a pretty decent team that was totally overmatched, while the
Cardinal avoided the usual screwing-around phase of the match that
the heavy favorite seems to engage in.  Junior middle Brian Moore,
fresh from being named the Best Blocker at the NORCECA championships
during the summer, led the Cardinal, hitting a blistering .588 with
12 kills.  Sophomore Keenan Whitehurst hit .625 with five kills and
nine blocks in the 64-minute match, helping Stanford out-stuff the
Slugs 13-3.  UCSC hit .000 in the first game and went downhill from
there as good blocking and tough serving, especially from freshman
Patrick "brother of Kristin and Jimmy" Klein.  The Cardinal started
game two with five consecutive hits that sailed waaaaay long,
including three in a row by Klein, to put the visitors up 4-0, but
Stanford called its only timeout of the evening and raced to 11-4
fairly quickly thereafter.  Other highlight including jump-serving
specialist Devin Poolman recording an ace, and hitting .667 with
five kills, Michael Hoefer putting down eight kills, Aaron Garcia
coming off the bench to serve three consecutive aces, and 5-10
setter Stewart Chong coming up with five stuffs, including a solo
roof of Adrian Sosa, the Slugs' biggest player.  On an overpass, no
less.  Marty Leshin (6-4-15, .133, 15 assists) and Alex Goldhammer
(1-0-2, .500) were the only UCSC players to hit positive.  The
Cardinal hit an OK .354 and had 7 aces while the Slugs hit -.078 for
the night, with no aces and nine digs.

The night also gave the Farm faithful their first look at the new
rules.  Stanford served from all over the place, no balls hit the
ceiling, no inadvertant nets were not called, Chong tried to make a
kick save but was way too late, and about four serves were passed
overhead, leading to groans from the crowd but nary a whistle.  To
summarize: the serving rule has a big effect on the game, although,
after teams get used to it, the actual impact will likely be small.
The double-hit rule didn't change much, and the other rules were
irrelevant.  I love the service rule (I usually play left-side in
grass doubles, so I guess I have a lot of experience serving from
there), love the foot rule (rarely relevent, but when it is,
allowing foot contacts usually leads to a spectacular play), find
the net rule basically immaterial (refs often miss those nets
anyway), love the ceiling rule (the penalty for digging the ball
really high is you don't know where it will come down, but at least
you're allowed to chase it), and am no longer TOTALLY hating the
double-hit rule.  Not that I love it or anything; I just don't
totally hate it.  As a wise man said to me, if you allow double hits
at all times (and just call lifts), you don't get an advantage.  If
you make a clean contact, the ball goes where you want it to.  If
you make a sloppy-but-legal double-hit, you still have to chase the
errant pass down.  Perhaps that's penalty enough, plus it lets
the players decide the game more.  Now that Ravi hates me, I'll wind
down.

Summary summary:  Stanford played a team that it was better than,
and beat them easily.  Hard to see how good the Cardinal is, but
they weren't bad.  More news to come next week, when most of the big
boys tee it up in Goleta at the UCSB mega-mixer.

Chris Crader