Playing at home for the last time, the seniors on the No. 11 Stanford men’s volleyball team led the Cardinal to a pair of wins this weekend and helped secure the sixth seed in next week’s Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) Tournament.

Senior outside hitter Jesse Meredith came off the bench in the second game against No. 6 UCLA and sparked a comeback for the four-game win (24-30, 30-27, 30-20, 30-28). On Saturday night, senior outside hitter Matt Ceran was second on the team in kills as the Cardinal recorded a four-game victory over No. 7 UC-Irvine (30-23, 28-30, 30-23, 30-24).

“There’s always nerves that seniors put on themselves — they know it is their last home weekend and there’s always that built-in anxiety,” Stanford coach John Kosty said. “But they both played really well. Matt struggled a little bit against UCLA and Jesse came in and just picked up the team and played great. And then Matt rebounded and put some big swings away in the fourth game for us to beat Irvine.”

The pair of wins put the Cardinal (17-10, 12-10 MPSF) alone in sixth place in the conference standings. Stanford will start the league tournament Saturday at third-seeded No. 3 Cal State Northridge. Northridge won both regular-season match-ups, although the Cardinal won a preseason meeting.

No. 4 Long Beach State earned the top seed with a win over Northridge this weekend and has a first-round bye in the tournament. No. 2 BYU is the second seed and will face the winner of a play-in game between Irvine and No. 10 Southern California. UCLA will face No. 5 Pepperdine in the 4-5 match.

“It’s an incredible tournament and anybody can win it,” Kosty said. “There are some frontrunners, but you can’t count out Pepperdine, you can’t count out Stanford, you can’t count out any of these teams because everybody has beaten each other.”

The Cardinal started the weekend in a tie for sixth place, and needed both wins to avoid Wednesday’s play-in match.

Stanford fell behind early in the first game against UCLA and could not close the gap, trailing by at least three for most of the frame, which the Bruins won 30-24.

The Cardinal got out of the gates faster in the second game, but UCLA again built a slight lead. Stanford came back to win 30-27, and in the third game, Stanford pulled ahead and held off the Bruins down the stretch. The Cardinal closed out the game, 30-20, with five unanswered points, including three kills and an ace.

Stanford carried that momentum into the fourth game, but UCLA battled back to tie the score several times late. With the game tied at 28, freshman outside hitter Spencer McLachlin put down two of his match-high 22 kills to end the game and the match, 30-28.

Behind McLachlin, sophomore opposite Evan Romero was second on the team with 14 kills and Meredith added 10 on .450 hitting. Romero and freshman libero Jordan Inafuku tied with a match-high 11 digs each, while sophomore middle blocker Garrett Werner led the team with seven blocks.

After both teams had won on Friday night, Stanford and Irvine were battling for sixth place — and the right to skip the MPSF play-in game — on Saturday. The Cardinal’s win was its third over the defending national champion Anteaters, following two victories in an eight-day span in January.

Serving made the difference for the Cardinal in the first game. Stanford missed only three serves in the game while Irvine missed eight, and the Cardinal won 30-23.

“Even though our serving statistics may not reflect it, I thought we served really well,” Kosty said. “We only had five aces on paper, but we put them in a lot of difficult situations with our serve. They never got into an offensive rhythm and that was directly related to our serving.”

The Anteaters came back in the second game to edge the Cardinal, 30-28, and even the match. However, Stanford regained control in the third game, leading wire to wire en route to a 30-23 win. Stanford again took command early in the fourth game, going ahead for good at 10-9 and eventually winning the game 30-24 to finish the match.

UC-Irvine’s Jon Steller led all players with 16 kills while Romero notched 14 to lead the Cardinal. Ceran chipped in 13 while McLachlin and junior middle blocker Brandon Williams were also in double digits with 11 each. Williams made only one error on 13 swings and finished the night hitting .769.

Shoji finished with four aces and Williams added one, while Inafuku anchored the back row with 10 digs. Williams led the Cardinal’s blocking efforts with six, including a solo.

“Irvine is a really good team,” Kosty said. “Their tempo is quick and they are a really hard team to get blocks against because they get the ball to the net fast. I’m really happy with our 10 blocks tonight and I am really happy with our 40 digs. It shows me we are in the right position and we are controlling the ball.”

The Cardinal plays at Northridge Saturday night. The winner will advance to the MSPF semifinals next week in Long Beach against either the play-in winner or BYU. The tournament champion will receive an automatic bid to the NCAA Final Four on May 1.