No. 6 Pepperdine defeated No. 9 BYU men’s volleyball by a score of 3-1 (25-21, 19-25, 25-23, 25-15) at the Smith Fieldhouse on Mar. 27.
The result keeps Pepperdine undefeated in Mountain Pacific Sports Federation play at 7-0 and drops BYU to a conference record of 4-3. The match was closely contested, with both teams trading points through much of the first three sets before Pepperdine pulled away in the fourth.
BYU head coach Shawn Olmstead said, “Credit to Pepperdine. It’s tough to play here, but it didn’t seem to impact them. It felt like our guys were trying to do too much. Pepperdine is always a really, really good blocking team, and after a few swings from a few of our guys, it felt like the rest of them were really impacted, trying to overdo things. Once you saw us hitting the way we need to hit, dong things correctly, it got close there.”
BYU setter Tyler Herget recorded 37 assists during the match and reached an individual milestone with his career total surpassing 2,500 assists—becoming only the sixth player in BYU’s rally-scoring era to achieve this mark. Teilon-Jonathan Tufuga tied his career high with four aces for BYU.
Connor Oldani led BYU with eleven kills; Tufuga and Moser each contributed eight kills while AJ Cottle had seven and Gavin Chambers added five kills for the Cougars.
Pepperdine finished with a .417 hitting percentage compared to .226 for BYU and committed ten attack errors versus twenty-one for BYU.
The two teams are scheduled for another matchup tomorrow night at Smith Fieldhouse.
