The No. 1 ranked BYU volleyball team opened up the MPSF conference tournament by sweeping No. 14 UC Irvine in three sets.
“I knew when people got to the game they were going to think these two teams look very similar,” said BYU head coach Shawn Olmstead. “They’ve got some guys that can bring it off the bench that really got after it. We knew they were going to be aggressive and come out and serve really tough. It’s good to be tested and we need that going forward.”
Ben Patch and Jake Langois lead the Cougars with 14 and 13 kills respectively. Brenden Sander contributed nine kills on the night.
Leo Durkin dished out 38 of BYU’s 42 assists, three more than UC Irvine’s 35.
The Cougars had five aces in the match. Patch and Sander had two each with Langlois adding another.
BYU will continue the conference tournament against the winner between Stanford and UC Santa Barbara Thursday at 7:30 in the Smith Fieldhouse.
