Coming into its first home match of the season, the No. 6 Stanford men’s volleyball team is off to its best start in six years. The last time the Cardinal won three of its first four games was in January of 2002. The men will try to make it four of five when they host Division III UC-Santa Cruz tonight in Burnham Pavilion.

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Stanford Daily File Photo

Junior Miki Groppi, sophomores Evan Romero and Garrett Warner and the Stanford men are looking for their fourth win in five games in tonight’s match-up with the Banana Slugs.

“Santa Cruz is a good team and they always bring their ‘A’ game when they play us,” head coach John Kosty said. “We are excited to host the match and look forward to a battle.”

Stanford (3-1, 1-1 MPSF) split a pair of matches on the road last weekend, falling in four games to No. 4 UCLA before besting defending national champion and seventh-ranked UC-Irvine for the second time in two weeks, also in four games.

Sophomore right side hitter Evan Romero had a match-high 22 kills in the loss to the Bruins, while senior outside hitter Matt Ceran added 11. Against Irvine, it was Ceran leading the way with 18 kills while Romero was second with 13.

The Cardinal is off to a good start in 2008, but there is still plenty to work on as the MPSF season gets underway.

“One of the things coming out of the weekend was that we need to improve the consistency of our sideout game,” Kosty said. “When we were winning this weekend, our sideout was really good, but when we dropped behind, our sideout struggled. That will happen at times and I thought that in game four of the Irvine match, we tightened up our belts and played well to come back and win that game and that match.”

Kosty also pointed to the service game as an area for improvement. Four players combined for ten aces in last weekend’s matches, but the team also missed 31 serves, an entire game’s worth of points.

“We have the ability to score a fair amount of points off of our serve,” Kosty said. “But we definitely need to be more consistent in that aspect of our game.”

The Banana Slugs (2-2) come into tonight’s match on a two-game winning streak after back-to-back sweeps of SUNY New Paltz and Holy Names. Senior outside hitter Brian Shires and junior outside Brice Dahlmeier lead the team with 44 kills on the season.

The Cardinal last faced Santa Cruz early in the 2006 season, which resulted in a three-game Stanford sweep.

One of the most glaring differences between the two teams is their relative size — the tallest player on the Santa Cruz team is six-foot-four, while the Cardinal roster boasts four players listed at six-foot-seven and five more at six-foot-six.

One of the biggest will not be on the court for the Cardinal, though, as freshman outside hitter Spencer McLachlin sprained his ankle on Saturday. But even without McLachlin, the Stanford front line will have a sizeable advantage.

“It can be both good and bad,” Kosty said. “Smaller teams tend to be quicker and run faster offenses, especially from the middle. We don’t see that an awful lot and it can be an advantage.

“To nullify that advantage, we will need our service game to be on, so we can put them in situations where their middle is no longer a factor and we can concentrate on their outsides.”

Tonight’s match is at 7 p.m. in Burnham Pavilion. After that, the players will have only a few days to rest before returning to MPSF action this weekend. The Cardinal will host No. 11 Southern California on Friday and then face second-ranked Pepperdine on Saturday.