By Ashlyn Hewlett and Daniel Ng

After four straight road trips, the No. 4 BYU men’s volleyball team was glad to be home this weekend as it reeled off a 30-28, 25-30, 30-27, 30-18 victory on Friday night over No. 1 Pepperdine.

In front of 4,169 fans on Friday, the Cougars (10-7, 8-6 MPSF) were able to play consistently on both sides of the net as they bounced back from two losses against Hawaii last weekend. After the Cougars ended Pepperdine’s eight-match winning streak, the Waves (10-5, 9-4 MPSF) bounced back and swept the BYU 3-0 Saturday to split the weekend series.

“It’s great to be back at home,” BYU coach Shawn Patchell said. “It seems like it’s been forever.”

The Cougars hit at a clip of .441 in the Friday night match and had 13 total blocks as a team, compared to only seven blocks and a .298 hitting percentage recorded by the Waves.

Pepperdine led for the majority of the first set on Friday before BYU evened the score at 22. The Cougars had  a set-point chance at 29-27, and BYU finished off Pepperdine on its second set-point opportunity when a hard BYU attack led to a passing error by the Waves.

The second set belonged to Pepperdine, as it held BYU to .258 hitting, while the Waves hit .483 as a team. In a momentum-changing third set, Pepperdine took an early lead, but with the score tied at 26, Futi Tavana came up with a big block for BYU, followed by a kill by  Robb Stowell, which gave the Cougars a two-point cushion. The set ended with a kill by Andrew Stewart, coupled with a hitting error by Rodnei Santos of the Waves.

“In Game 3, we had spurts of good play,” Tavana said. “Our close at the end of the game helped us in Game 4. The momentum carried into Game 4 and [we] never looked back.”

The Cougars raced out to an 8-4 lead at the beginning of the fourth set. The lead increased to 12 on four different occasions, with a final score of 30-18.

The main difference between the Cougars’ win on Friday and the loss on Saturday was the hitting percentages between the teams.  BYU recorded its best hitting percentage of the season with .700 in the fourth set.  In Saturday’s match, the Cougars’ percentage didn’t get above .289, as they were swept in three sets.