USC
Stanford*
#11 Stanford Sweeps USC
March 28, 2003 | Men's Volleyball
March 28, 2003
STANFORD, Calif. --- Senior Curt Toppel (Pacific Palisades, CA) had match-highs of 15 kills and eight digs to lead 11th-ranked Stanford (12-10 overall, 9-7 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) to a 30-28, 34-32, 30-22 sweep over unranked USC (6-19, 2-14) on Friday night at Burnham Pavilion. Toppel was playing in his first match since Feb. 1, after missing the previous 11 with a strained abdominal muscle.
Senior William Strickland (Malibu, CA) had 14 kills, six digs and a .545 hitting percentage (14 k-2 e-22 ta) for the Cardinal, while redshirt sophomore Kevin Hansen (Newport Beach, CA) added 40 assists. The Cardinal out-hit the Trojans .352 (48-16-91)-.135 (44-30-104), and out-blocked the visitors 11.5-5.0.
Sophomore Phil Small (North Wales, PA) and freshman Joao Grangeiro (Rio de Janiero, Brazil) led USC with 11 kills apiece.
The Cardinal scored the first four points of game one, and seven of the first nine, but the Trojans came all the way back to take a 27-25 lead. Stanford scored four of the next five points to take a 29-28 lead, and closed out the game on one of the Trojans' 16 service errors. The Cardinal out-blocked USC 5.5-1.0 in the opening game.
USC jumped out to leads of 19-15 and 23-19 in game two, but the hosts came back to tie the score at 24-24. Stanford had five game points, and eventually finished it out on a USC hitting error.
In the third game, Stanford used a 5-1 run to take a 15-11 advantage. The Trojans could get no closer than three points the rest of the game, as the Cardinal scored seven of the final 10 points to pull away. Senior William Curtis (Whittier, CA) wrapped it up with a kill on Stanford's first match point. Stanford hit an impressive .464 (17-4-28) in game three, compared to USC's .057 (12-10-35).
The Cardinal will wrap up its 2002-03 regular season home schedule on Saturday night against top-ranked Pepperdine at 7:00 p.m. at Burnham Pavilion. It will be the final regular season home match for the Cardinal's five seniors --- Paul Bocage (Princeton, NJ), Curtis, Kyle Strache (Malibu, CA), Strickland and Toppel.
