Playoff spot? Clinched.
Second straight upset over a top-five team? Check.
Momentum? Snowballing.
Needless to say, it was a good weekend for the No. 11 USC men's volleyball team.
The Trojans came back from a 2-0 deficit Saturday night to upset No. 5 Pepperdine in Malibu in the final game (31-33, 25-30, 30-27, 31-29, 17-15) - their second major upset in as many games and their third straight victory.
The Trojans (13-13, 10-10 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) took every punch that was swung at them and fired quite a few of their own.
After dropping the first two games by narrow margins, USC stormed back by strengthening its middle attack and sent the match into a fifth game. With the score tied at 15, Murphy Troy's kill gave the Trojans the advantage before Hunter Current sealed the match with a quick kill in transition.
"It was one of those things where we kind of grew up as a team," USC coach Bill Ferguson said.
And there were not many growing pains for Juan Figueroa. He led the Trojans with 29 kills on .392 hitting with only nine errors, after battling an asthma attack before the match.
"He absolutely battled for us tonight," Ferguson said, referring to Figueroa as a "bulldog."
"He kept calling for the ball and he just kept fighting."
The Trojans' all-important middle attack featured a dual-threat, with the likes of Andrew Vernon and Current. The two middle blockers totaled 27 kills - 14 for Vernon and 13 for Current - and both hit outstanding percentages, especially Vernon's .545.
Ferguson pointed to the standout play of two Trojan players on the defensive side as absolute keys to the victory as well. Luke Morris received 47 sets without a single error, while Tri Bourne was on a whole other planet with 20 digs.
Morris also had a number of key digs at critical moments in games four and five.
The Trojans finished the match hitting .315 compared to the Waves' .329. Despite being outhit overall, the Trojans bested Pepperdine in game five, .217 to .150.
Also in the final game, Pepperdine standout Paul Carroll, who had 33 kills when game five started, did not record another kill.
With only two matches remaining in the regular season, the Trojans have clinched a spot in the MPSF playoffs, and are on a 4-1 tier in their last five matches.
"We won our way in, and we didn't have to wait for somebody to lose," Ferguson said.
The loss was an ironic twist of fate for Pepperdine (12-9, 11-9), which honored its 1986 National Championship team during the game and during a daylong alumni fundraiser. The '86 team came back from a 14-9 game five deficit in the national championship that year to defeat none other than USC.
Ferguson is quite familiar with that particular match; he was a towel boy for that '86 team.
"I found out [that the 1986 team would be recognized] before the match and I made sure to tell our team about it," he said.
Twenty-two years later, the Trojans get the last laugh.
