By Nicholas Fortes

The women's volleyball team celebrates after their win against Fordham University back in September. Photo by Chad Uemera/Daily Titan Staff Photographer

Daily Titan Staff Writer

The Cal State Fullerton women’s volleyball team has a great chance at earning their first conference road win this season as they travel to the central coast to challenge UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. The Titans swept both teams on back-to-back nights in early October.

The Titans (12-9, 3-5) have hit a bump in the middle of their conference season, losing four of their last five games, three of which have occurred during away games, where the Titans have been struggling this season.

“Winning on the road is hard enough, but we had (Saddler) tear a glut muscle and (Neto) got sick,” said Assistant Coach Vihn Nguyen. “Its been a tough year; we were great on the road and bad at home last year.”

The Titans completely dismantled Cal Poly (6-17, 2-8) in their last match-up sweeping the Mustangs in three sets 25-11, 25-14, 25-17, their first win over Cal Poly since 2004 and Coach Zimmerman’s 100 Big West Conference win.

“We have a lot of confidence in going into these games because we swept them both at home,” freshman middle blocker Kayla Neto said.

The Mustangs are looking to end a dismally demoralizing stretch of five straight five set loses to in-conference foes with their last victory coming on Oct. 9 in Northridge.

The second night of the Titans’ two-day road trip will face them up against UC Santa Barbara, another team the Titans took care of easily in an upset in Titan Gym in three straight sets, earning only their fourth win in 58 matches against the Gauchos (16-5, 6-3).

“They know what we have and we know what they have,” Nguyen said. “Its not like we can do something different and them not know about it going into the game with each game available on a server.”

The Gauchos went 2-0 this past weekend beating UC Irvine in a five set thriller and sweeping UC Riverside on the next night and have won five of their last six matches.

The Titans will need to improve on their road performance winning only a total of four sets in four matches and being swept by UC Davis and Long Beach State.

UCSB’s senior outside hitter and former conference and national player of the week winner Rebecca Saraceno was calmed on the court by the Titans in the first match up and they’re looking to keep it that way in the second game.

“We used three blockers against UCSB last time and it really cut down on (Saraceno’s) angles for kills in the game,” Nguyen said. “We tried to serve the ball to her to keep her from being set as many times in the game and we’re going to try to do the same.”

The Titans only have two road games this weekend, then a stretch of three at home, until finishing out the season with three in-conference road games including one against arch rival UC Irvine on Nov. 13 so success on the road will inevitably play a key role in the Titans run at the conference tournament.