Hall of Fame
From the 2010 Hall of Fame program:
Pepperdine’s 1985 men’s volleyball team – the famed “Malibu Roofing Company” – was considered one of the best the sport has seen. Twenty years later, the 2005 Waves followed the same successful blueprint in winning the program’s fifth NCAA championship and the school’s eighth overall.
Both the 1985 and 2005 teams, in fact, finished with identical 25-2 overall records. Both posted 15-match win streaks. And both were known for their outstanding blocking (the 2005 squad averaged 3.6 per game).
After winning the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation’s regular season with a 20-2 record, the Waves won the double by beating Cal State Northridge and Long Beach State in Malibu for the MPSF Tournament title as well.
That put the Waves into the NCAA Championships for the fifth time in eight years, though the Waves were looking for their first national title since 1992. At Pauley Pavilion, the Waves beat Ohio State in the semifinal before coming back from a 2-1 deficit to edge the host Bruins in five games (30-23, 23-30, 24-30, 30-25, 15-10). Seven times in 2005, the Waves were pushed to a fifth game, but they were victorious in all seven.
The Waves avenged their only losses of the season in the finals of both tournaments, as they lost an early-season matchup at UCLA, then won 15 in a row before a loss at Long Beach State. Pepperdine finished the season with eight consecutive wins.
Pepperdine swept all major awards from both the AVCA and MPSF, as outside hitter Sean Rooney was the Player of the Year, setter Jonathan Winder was the Freshman of the Year and Marv Dunphy was the Coach of the Year.
Rooney was named the NCAA Tournament’s Most Outstanding Player and the MPSF Player of the Year and was joined on the All-American first team by middle blocker Andy Hein. For Rooney, he became just the seventh player to earn four-time All-American honors from the AVCA. Winder was an All-American second teamer and he and outside hitter John Parfitt were on the NCAA All-Tournament team. Pepperdine’s other starters were middle blocker Tom Hulse, libero James Ka and opposite John Mayer.
Dunphy didn’t have a set lineup going into the season but his experiments paid off. Parfitt had been a middle blocker but moved to outside hitter without being asked to pass. Mayer had been a libero and a setter before being converted to opposite. Ka had played every position except middle blocker at one point before settling in at libero. Winder became the second freshman setter to lead Pepperdine to a national championship.
The Waves went an all-time best 14-0 at home in 2005. Pepperdine was ranked among the nation’s top three teams all season long and held the #1 ranking for a total of six weeks before the final poll.
