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Provo • Football and basketball get the headlines and draw the big crowds, but the most successful sport at BYU almost every year is men's volleyball.
What other BYU team can go to the home of the No. 1 team in the nation and beat them twice handily on back-to-back nights? That's what first-year coach Shawn Olmstead's 21-3 Cougars did last weekend, knocking off UCLA 3-1 on Friday and 3-1 on Saturday at the John Wooden Center.
It had never happened before — for any BYU team. Imagine the hype if BYU's men's basketball team somehow did that.
"The boys did a phenomenal job," said Olmstead, a former Cougar volleyball star who coached BYU's women's volleyball team the past four seasons before replacing Chris McGown on the men's side. "UCLA is a darn good team. To go down there and play at that level, I was really impressed. We stayed level-headed. We only lost a set each night."
It also helped that BYU fans took over UCLA's arena, giving the Cougars the same type of home-crowd advantage that the basketball team often enjoys in West Coast Conference road games.
Now, BYU is No. 1 in the American Volleyball Coaches Association poll, just in time for a visit from USC on Friday and Saturday at Smith Fieldhouse. A pair of sellout crowds are expected as the Cougars, 17-3 in MPSF play, chase a regular-season championship and a No. 1 seed in the MPSF tournament, which starts next week.
Currently tied atop the standings with No. 3-ranked Stanford (19-3, 17-3 MPSF), the Cougars need to sweep USC and have the Cardinal lose to either UCLA or UCSB this weekend to win the title outright. If BYU and Stanford find themselves tied for first late Saturday night, Stanford wins the tiebreaker based on head-to-head points (211-205) and will host the MPSF tournament.
The Trojans (7-17, 5-15) are having a down year, but the Cougars say they are still USC, and still dangerous.
"I told the guys, 'You never want to play with those kinds of animals,' " Olmstead said. "Your mom and dad tell you that at a young age: you don't poke those ones. They are going to come in here [expecting to win]. They might throw a whole new lineup out there. Who knows?"
What Olmstead does know is that he's got a dynamite team that has won 17 of its past 18 matches — 14 of those in straight sets — and has the potential to win BYU's fourth national volleyball championship, and maybe more. The club's only starting senior is Michael Hatch, an outstanding middle blocker.
The other stars are sophomores Price Jarman, Leo Durkin, Tim Dobbert, Ben Patch and Brenden Sander (brother of former BYU star and Olympic hopeful Taylor Sander) and junior Jake Langlois. Patch, a 6-foot-9 jumping jack from Provo High, also has an outside shot of making the Olympic team that travels to Rio de Janeiro this summer.
The Cougars rank first nationally in blocks per set, with Jarman and Hatch manning the middle, and are second in hitting percentage and 10th in kills per set. Hatch is second nationally in blocks per set, and Patch is fourth in kills per set.
"I guess the biggest reasons for our success are our humility and just our resilience," said Patch, a freshman All-American in 2013 before a church mission to Ohio. "We are a team that is OK with working hard, and if we lose a set, we are just going to work harder the next day. If you are going to beat us, you are going to have to outwork us."
Olmstead said that resilience paid off when UCLA won the first set 25-20 last Saturday night, and the Cougars easily could have packed it in and been happy with a road split. Instead, they reeled off 25-20, 25-18 and 25-23 wins.
"We have a bunch of really physical, really strong boys," Olmstead said. "They are willing to go through the ups and down. These guys play with a lot of fight and are willing to go through some lumps to get an edge wherever they can."
Right now, they are on the upswing, even if BYU's other sports draw more attention.
Twitter: @drewjay —
BYU men's volleyball season highlights
• Heading into a two-match series against USC, the 21-3 Cougars are ranked No. 1 in the AVCA Coaches Poll.
• With a 17-3 record in MPSF matches, the Cougars can clinch at least a share of the regular-season title if they sweep the Trojans at Smith Fieldhouse Friday and Saturday.
• They swept then-No. 1 UCLA in two matches in Los Angeles for the first time in school history last weekend.
• They have won 17 of their last 18 matches, 14 of them in straight sets.