The defending national champs open the regular season in Palo Alto, where they'll play #6 BYU and #10 Stanford on Friday at 7:00 p.m. and Saturday at 9:00 p.m Central. Lewis, ranked #9 and coming off a sweep of #8 UC Irvine in So Cal earlier this week, will also play BYU and Stanford.

Aside from last season, the #2 Ramblers haven't had a lot of success against these two MPSF powerhouses. Loyola beat both teams last year-- BYU at home very early in the season, and Stanford in the National Championship game, also at home-- but prior to last year Loyola was a combined 1-8 all time. The traditional gap between the MIVA and MPSF isn't what it once was, but this meeting between four ranked teams from the two conferences at the site of the 2015 NCAA Tournament should be a great test to see how Loyola is going to cope without last year's senior leadership from Joe Smalzer and Peter Jasaitis.

Loyola Game Notes: http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/loy ... 108aaa.pdf

Watch via streaming video here: http://pac-12.com/videos/stanford-university The Stanford match is also televised on the Pac12 Network.

Loyola beats BYU, 3-1 (25-17, 25-21, 22-25, 25-23). The Ramblers only played 8 players in the entire match, and they looked a little winded near the end, making a lot of service aces that added unneeded drama. Caldwell and Jaeschke were the best players for the Ramblers, McAndrews looked a little rusty. Can't afford 15 services errors against host #10 Stanford tomorrow night...

I didn't get to view the match. Was McAndrews playing Right Side? Judging by the box score, Jendryk and Olson played middle. I saw McAndrews play some RS against Windsor.

This is a big win despite being early in the season. Any win over a perennial MPSF contender is huge, especially with Lewis already beating Irvine AND Stanford.

Ramblers win, defeating #10 Stanford on their own court. I certainly didn't expect it to be as easy as 25-22, 25-13, 25-18. Loyola road winning streak up to 12. Lewis dropped the first two sets to BYU, then came back to force a fifth set before BYU finally put them away.

It will be interesting to see how all the early performances and non-con matches affect the AVCA rankings on Monday. I expect Pepperdine and Loyola to remain #1 and #2. After that, there should be a whole lot of movement.

Some video from the end of the Stanford match from OffTheBlock:

http://www.offtheblockblog.com/2015/01/ ... #more-9641

Postgame video from the Pac-12 Network who covered the match via the Stanford website.

http://pac-12.com/videos/recap-stanford ... icago-farm