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Wildcats to host No. 2 Cardinal

UA head coach David Rubio has been looking forward to this weekend all season.

In perhaps the most exciting home series of the volleyball season, No. 18 UA will take on California tonight at 7 p.m. and No. 2 Stanford tomorrow night at 7 p.m. in McKale Center. The Wildcats (15-8 overall, 9-5 Pacific 10 Conference) have won three straight Pacific 10 Conference games and are coming off of a sweep of the Washington schools on the road last weekend.

"This is going to be an incredibly important weekend for us," Rubio said. "We know we have the talent to play with the better teams, it's just a matter of us going out there and doing it."

The California match seems to be the calm before the storm. The Golden Bears (10-13, 5-9) are coming off sweeps by both UCLA and USC.

History is on UA's side for the match against Cal as the Wildcats are 22-6 against the Golden Bears all-time.

Cal is led by sophomore setter/outside hitter Candace McNamee, whose .917 kill percentage against Oregon on Oct. 4 set a school record and landed her in Sports Illustrated's Faces in the Crowd. Her career 1,805 assists in just under two full seasons is third in the history of Cal volleyball.

If the way the Wildcats have been playing lately is any indicator, Saturday night's match against Stanford may be their best opportunity to make waves in the Pac-10 this season. UA, who is 2-6 against ranked teams this season, needs to show that they can defeat solid, ranked teams.

Stanford is just that.

The Cardinal (21-2, 13-1), who are five-time defending Pac-10 champs, are currently tied for first with UCLA, as both teams have lost just one conference match.

At Stanford on Nov. 15, the Wildcats had an opportunity to beat the Cardinal early but flopped.

Leading early, UA let the Cardinal fight back to win game one by the score of 16-14. The Cardinal went on to win the next two games by a total score of 30-6, as the Wildcats were swept for just the third time all season.

In order to beat Stanford this time, the Wildcats will have to stop 6-foot-1 freshman outside hitter Logan Tom, who is highly touted as one of the best players in the country despite her young age. Tom, who has been playing at the international level since she was 16, burned the Wildcats for 16 kills and 11 digs the last time the two teams met.

Rubio, who said he "expects us to win the match", is looking forward to the challenge.

"I've been saying all year that we're going to be a different team late in the season," he said. "Now, I can honestly say that we're a different team than we were two weeks ago. We're definitely taking major strides in the maturation process."