This weekend UCLA’s bench featured a relatively uncommon sight at a women’s volleyball game: two moustaches, one admittedly more fleshed out than the other. Coach Mike Sealy’s was fully developed, while assistant coach Dan O’Dell’s whiskers still had some growing left to do.

The moustaches are part of “Movember,” a cause meant to draw attention to men’s health issues that the team has supported in recent years. Like a teenager’s first moustache, however, this team learned it still has some growing of its own to do with the postseason rapidly approaching.

No. 2 UCLA (24-5, 17-4) ran into a stout Arizona defense on Friday and struggled to put the ball down consistently. The Bruins were unable to get a head of steam against the Wildcats and played from behind for most of the match, suffering their first home loss and second sweep of the season.

Sophomore outside hitter Kelly Reeves came out firing, scoring the first three kills for UCLA, but momentum was elusive for the team as a whole. Reeves finished the night with nine kills and 10 digs, and was disappointed with the game’s result.

“The little details are the most important, and we let a lot of those go when we shouldn’t have. We kind of got … not lazy, but we kind of weren’t there, we checked out a little bit. Hopefully we can change that mentality,” Reeves said.

Junior outside hitter Rachael Kidder led the team on Friday with 15 kills, and echoed Reeves’ message of the importance of staying focused as the season nears its end.

“We definitely need to pay more attention to detail. There were a lot of little things that happened where normally we can shrug it off and play well in other aspects of the game, but I think the little things are starting to catch up to us and it’s causing us to have problems,” Kidder said.

The little things caught up to UCLA in a big way, as loose balls and close calls piled up against the team on Friday. The Bruins committed 25 attack errors and ended up on the wrong side of more than one judgment call that could have gone either way.

The Wildcats jumped out to an early 7-2 lead and won the first two sets 25-23 to put the Bruins on the ropes. Arizona seemed to have a defensive answer for everything Sealy and a talented UCLA squad threw at them. Sealy mixed up the lineup throughout the game, but Kidder and company were unable to find the right offensive strategy against Arizona.

“I think we were pretty good emotionally tonight, we were all pretty into the game. Obviously they were digging balls but we needed to figure out ways to get kills,” Kidder said.

Multiple points were decided on long back-and-forth rallies, and Arizona’s defense prevailed at the end of the game to close out UCLA in the third set.

“I can’t say I’m overly surprised by the result. Ever since that Washington weekend, we have been a fraction of the team that we’ve been earlier in the year,” Sealy said.

“Our energy’s down, our execution’s down, and it’s about finding a way to regroup, and that’s the challenge.”

Sunday’s game against the Sun Devils provided an opportunity for the Bruins to do just that. UCLA bounced back and swept Arizona State 25-23, 25-19, 29-27 to clinch a second-place finish in the Pac-12. Kidder posted a match-high 21 kills and senior libero Lainey Gera added 20 digs.

UCLA heads into its final regular season game against USC having dropped two of its last four games, but if there’s anything the team has learned this season, it’s that they control their fate.

“We need to want it more than anyone. Tonight, Arizona showed that they want it more than we do, and we have to treat every match like we’re playing for a national championship,” Reeves said.