USC
Stanford
Men's Volleyball Falls To Stanford, 3-1
April 12, 2002 | Men's Volleyball
April 12, 2002
LOS ANGELES -- Curt Toppel had a match-high 25 kills to lead the No. 7-ranked Stanford men's volleyball team to a 30-18, 30-25, 29-31, 30-23 win over USC in a Mountain Pacific Sports Federation contest on Friday (April 12) in the USC North Gym.
The Cardinal improved to 16-8 overall and 15-6 in the MPSF. USC saw its school-record losing streak extend to 11 matches as it fell to 5-22 overall and 2-19 in the MPSF.
Toppel hit .449 and had a match-best 5 aces, and teammate Paul Bocage added 10 kills while hitting .471. Kyle Strache (hitting .615) and Billy Strickland added 9 kills each, while Marcus Skacel had 8 kills and a match-high 11 digs.
For USC, Brook Billings came off the bench to post 22 kills while hitting .514 and added 6 digs. Blake Tippett had 15 kills (hitting .423) with 7 digs and Josh Day had 12 kills (hitting .346).
Stanford outhit the Trojans, .400 to .272, and had more team blocks (8.0 to 5.0) and aces (9 to 3).
The first game was tied at 6-6 before the Cardinal scored 9 of the next 12 points to take control while hitting .458 to USC's .107. Troy trailed just 24-23 in the second game, but could score only 2 more points the rest of the way while hitting just .216 to Stanford's .350. USC came back from a 26-22 third game deficit to overtake the Cardinal at 29-28 and then a pair of Billings kills gave the game to the Trojans, whose hitting improved to .395. In the final game, Stanford scored 7 consecutive points to open up a comfortable 13-8 lead and hit .500 to close out the match.
USC concludes its 2002 season on Saturday (April 13) with a 7 p.m. MPSF home match against No. 14 Pacific.
