For the No. 9 Illinois volleyball team, this weekend’s match against UCLA isn’t about getting revenge. 

Senior opposite side hitter Liz McMahon said she isn’t thinking of avenging the Illini’s 2011 NCAA championship loss to the Bruins, but is more focused on the opportunity to get better by playing such high-level competition. 

“I just always love playing Pac-12 schools because you don’t always see that all the time and they’re always a strong conference,” McMahon said.

Illinois (3-0) will start its second weekend of play with a matchup against UCLA (2-1) on Friday before playing No. 2 Stanford (2-0), possibly the Illini’s toughest competition of the season, on Sunday afternoon. 

Illinois will have to contain UCLA’s outside hitters. Illini head coach Kevin Hambly said the team will need a gameplan for senior outside hitter Karsta Lowe, who is second in the Pac-12 in kills with 50 this season. Hambly added that Illinois will also focus on freshman outside hitter Olga Strantzali. 

“The Bruins have good tempo,” Hambly said. “They got a kid, Karsta Lowe, who has six and a half kills (per set) or something. She’s a beast. And they got a little Greek lefty on the outside that will present a different challenge because she’s a left-handed outside.

“(The Challenge will be) figuring out how to stop those two players, just putting together a good game plan and executing.”

On top of dealing with Lowe and Strantzali, the Illini will be challenged by the Bruins’ speed. McMahon called UCLA “very fast offensively.”

The Illini’s matchups with the Bruins and the Cardinals are part of the larger Big Ten/Pac-12 Challenge that is taking place over the weekend. Fellow Big Ten conference member, No. 1 Penn State, will also compete in the Challenge, facing Stanford on Friday in a meeting of the top two teams in the nation. 

After dealing with UCLA’s speed and its outside hitters, Illinois will be tasked with slowing down Stanford’s middle blocker Inky Ajanaku, who is second in the Pac-12 in hitting percentage with a .512 hitting percentage this year. 

“They’re a loaded team,” Hambly said. “Every position can score. They all have their strengths and weaknesses as players but they’re very balanced. They got one of the best players in the country in Inky Ajanaku.”

Both the Bruins and the Cardinal run a 5-1 rotation system that the Illini are familiar with. Illinois currently runs a 6-2 but have run a 5-1 in the past, which may give Illinois an edge going into the weekend.

“We see it all the time,” Hambly said. “We do it in practice.

“We ran a 5-1 every year until this year so we have some idea what that’s like.”

Nicholas can be reached at [email protected] and @IlliniSportsGuy.