Three or four years ago, local fans would have been pretty split on which boys volleyball star was the best player: San Marcos High’s Jeff Menzel or Santa Barbara’s Carson Clark.
Now they’re marquee sophomores on their college squads, and Wednesday’s stat sheet shows that it’s still a worthy debate.
Menzel finished with 22 kills on 50 swings as his Gauchos held off Clark’s defending national-champion Anteaters 33-31, 30-28, 27-30, 30-24. Clark had 21 kills on 51 swings.
The match was played at the UCSB Rec Center due to a leak in the roof at Rob Gym (referred to by one ex-Gaucho in attendance as “the same leak that’s been there for 30 years”).
Carson Clark hits over the block of Jeff Menzel.
Menzel and Clark went head-to-head at the net numerous times, and while their numbers ended up similar, their personalities remain as different as ever.
“It’s definitely a competition between us,” said Menzel, an emotional player with a freakish vertical leap. “It’s all friendly, but when we’re on the court he’s not my friend at all. We know he’s their go-to-guy, so we spent a lot of time preparing for that.”
Clark, the smooth and soft-spoken lefty, had a different take.
“People definitely try to instill that whole rivalry thing between us, but I don’t really think about it that way. I don’t really care about kills or anything, I just want my team to win,” he said. “Jeff’s a great player, and you definitely notice what he can do when you’re playing against him.”
The tenth-ranked Gauchos mounted an impressive comeback in the second frame, rallying from an 18-12 deficit. The final point came when Menzel blasted a kill past Clark on the right side.
No. 12 Irvine managed to regain its composure after the second-set letdown, as Clark picked up a kill to give the Anteaters a 9-8 lead that they would keep the rest of the way. The Gauchos have suffered plenty of late meltdowns this year, going 3-6 in 5-set matches, but Menzel said that it’s made them more resistant to panicking.
“No, we didn’t panic at all after the third game. We’ve started to calm down a lot more in those situations thanks to all the 5-game matches we’ve had,” he said.
Menzel had two aces and a kill in the first eight points of the fourth frame and the Gauchos never trailed, growing the lead to as big as six points down the stretch. UC Irvine, a young team which only has three players that actually saw court-time during last year’s title run, was called for consecutive back-row attack violations in the final points and UCSB ended it shortly thereafter.
Menzel returns the favor to Clark.
It was only the second home win of the year for the Gauchos, who have been road warriors with an 8-1 record as the visiting team. They won in four sets at UC Irvine earlier in the year.
Irvine’s Jordan DuFault led all players in the match with 25 kills and a .439 hitting clip, while Jake Rosener and Scott Slaughter each had 14 kills for UCSB.
Clark struggled from the service line with six errors and one ace, while Menzel missed four but also tallied three aces. Clark was the match-leader in digs with 16. The former Don had plenty of praise to heap on the Gauchos.
“They’ve had pretty much the same team over there for two years, so they’ve been working with each other a lot. You can’t give them enough credit,” he said. “They used to be the team to beat back when they had Evan (Patak), and you can’t say that they’re not back.”
Patak, who now plays for the U.S. National Team, graduated in 2007.
He added that he thought UCSB libero Andy McGuire was “probably the best libero” in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation and that setter Vince Devany has exceeded all expectations running the Gaucho offense.
UCSB has won four consecutive matches and improves to 10-8 overall and 7-5 in the MPSF. The Anteaters are 9-10, 5-9. The Gauchos play at USC on Friday while Irvine will play at UCLA.
Will Montgomery, another ex-Don who red-shirted last year for the Anteaters, was on the sidelines but didn’t get in the match on Wednesday.
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