Matt Tarantino Garners MPSF Player of the Week Honors
3/14/2016 12:00:00 AM | Men's Volleyball
MPSF RELEASE
MALIBU, Calif.: - Redshirt-senior opposite Matt Tarantino garnered his first 2016 MPSF/Molten Player of the Week honor this week after leading the 8th-ranked Pepperdine men's volleyball team to two strong conference victories last week, including a comeback reverse sweep over the conference first-placed and nationally 3rd-ranked Stanford.
The honor is Tarantino's (Van Nuys, Calif./Bishop Alemany HS) second career nod for the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation/Molten accolade, with his first-ever weekly award having been accrued nearly two years ago to the date, on March 17 of the 2014 season.
The 6-foot-8 Van Nuys, Calif. native had a stellar weekend last week. In addition to the five-set road win over Stanford, he helped the Waves to a four-set defeat of 15th-ranked Cal Baptist at home.
For the Waves, he averaged 5.28 points/set after totaling 4.33 kills/set, 0.56 aces/set, 0.67 blocks/set, 1.44 digs/set and 0.56 assists/set. He amassed a .463 hitting percentage after nine sets of play, tabbing 39 total kills with only eight errors on 67 swings and earned 47.5 total points over two matches played. He also added five total aces, six block including one solo, 13 digs and five assists to help the Waves go undefeated throughout the week.
First, in the 3-1 win over Cal Baptist at home on Thursday, the senior led the Waves with 18 kills on a .467 attack output. He picked up only four errors on 30 attempts. The opposite also earned three service aces, six digs, three assists and three blocks, including one solo, in an all-around effort. He then led the Waves to a five-set reverse sweep victory at Stanford after tying his career-best 21 kills on a .459 offensive success rate. He added two more aces, seven digs, three blocks and two assists to help Pepperdine secure the upset.
Next, the Waves will travel to Provo, Utah for back-to-back 6 p.m. starts against top-ranked BYU on March 18 and 19. Live stats, live stream and game notes can all be found by following this link: http://gowav.es/mvb2014.
