USC Men's Volleyball 2009 Season Review
May 11, 2009 | Men's Volleyball
May 11, 2009
Who would have thought that the USC men's volleyball team would have a near-historic season in 2009?
After all, the Trojans entered 2009 picked sixth in the MPSF pre-season poll and seventh in the AVCA national pre-season ranking. The program had virtually fallen off the volleyball map, last making an appearance in the NCAA championships 18 years ago. So downtrodden was USC that it had averaged just 9 wins in each of its previous 7 seasons.
But third-year head coach Bill Ferguson and his staff did the near-impossible, getting the Trojans to the brink of a national championship in 2009. While the coaches privately had expressed high expectations for USC's prospects in 2010, they viewed 2009 as a stepping stone year.
Little did anyone know that 2010 was to arrive a year early!
USC got a preview of what was to come in 2009 when it won a pair of pre-season tournaments (the Can-Am Challenge and then the Hawaii Fall Tournament). The Trojans parlayed that success into a quick start to their 2009 campaign, barely losing the season opener to No. 1 Penn State, then running off 5 straight victories (their best winning streak since 2001). In fact, the Trojans won 11 of their first 14 matches, including consecutive wins over BYU for the first time since 1997-98 (snapping a 14-match losing skid to the Cougars) and a win over UCLA to give USC its third win in a row over the Bruins (its longest such streak since 1980-81).
However, the Trojans limped home, losing 4 of their final 5 regular season matches (all on the road), including the finale at Hawaii that left them tied for fifth in the MPSF standings at 13-9 (still its most league wins since 2000) and deprived them of hosting an MPSF tourney quarterfinal match.
Instead, USC went as the tourney's fifth seed to Stanford, where it came back from a 2-0 deficit to win in 5 sets. The Trojans then shocked top-ranked UC Irvine on the Anteaters' home floor in the MPSF semis, 3-0 (ending a 10-match losing streak to UCI), to make their first MPSF Finals appearance since 1999. USC then captured its first-ever MPSF Tournament title with a dramatic 3-2 win over No. 2-ranked Pepperdine, earning the Trojans their first NCAA Championship berth since 1991. At the NCAAs, USC beat defending NCAA champ Penn State in the semis before falling in 5 hard-fought sets to top-ranked UC Irvine in the final.
USC posted a number of other superlatives in 2009. It swept its MPSF season series with 5 opponents: BYU, Long Beach State, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara and Pacific. The Trojans posted their most overall wins (21) since 2001 and highest national ranking (No. 2) since 2000, and defeated Top 6-ranked squads 7 times. USC was second nationally in kills and assists and in the Top 10 in hitting percentage, digs and winning percentage.
The Trojans did all this while fielding a starting lineup that featured just 1 senior and 1 junior, along with 4 sophomores and a true freshman. Murphy Troy became USC's first All-American first teamer since 2000, while freshman Tony Ciarelli made the All-American second team. Troy also was USC's first All-MPSF first teamer since 2000 and Ciarelli was the first Trojan since 1999 to make the All-MPSF Freshman team. Senior Luke Morris set the USC career and season digs records. Riley McKibbin was third nationally in assists, Austin Zahn was in the Top 10 in hitting percentage, Troy was in the Top 15 in kills and aces and Morris was in the Top 15 in digs. Troy, McKibbin and Zahn made the NCAA All-Tournament team.
With all but Morris returning next year along with a strong group of reserves and some promising newcomers, USC's prospects for high-level success in 2010 are more than realistic. In a sense, the Trojans already lived 2010 this year.
"I'm proud of what we've done, but we're not done yet," Ferguson said after the NCAA final. "We expect to be in the NCAA final the next several years and hopefully we'll get it together at the very end. We're back on the map and that's the first step."
