HONOLULU, Hawaii — There will not be a third consecutive national championship for the Long Beach State men’s volleyball program.

Second-seeded UC Santa Barbara defeated third-seeded Long Beach in four sets in a Big West Conference semifinal on Friday night, 16-25, 25-17, 25-18, 25-15. Long Beach (7-5), which won the 2018 and 2019 national titles before the 2020 season was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, will not receive one of the two at-large berths in the seven-team NCAA Championships, which will be held May 3-8 at Ohio State.

UCSB (14-4) will meet fourth-seeded UC San Diego in Saturday’s title match. The Tritons (5-12) handed top-seeded Hawaii (15-1) its first loss of the season, rallying for a 22-25, 25-23, 16-25, 25-23, 18-16 victory in Friday’s late semifinal. The UCSB-UCSD winner will earn the Big West’s automatic berth in the NCAAs, and top-ranked Hawaii will certainly be awarded one of the at-large spots.

Long Beach dominated for much of the first set, opening an 18-9 lead before closing it out at 25-16, but its offense fell apart from there. Much like the first set, there were few lead changes in the second as UCSB got ahead early and stretched its lead to 22-14 at one point while holding LBSU to a match-low .029 hitting percentage on its way to a dominant 25-17 win.

Long Beach never found its first-set groove again. After hitting a sizzling .500 in the opening set, LBSU followed its second-set struggles by hitting .281 in the third and a dismal .129 in the fourth. Meanwhile, UCSB hit a match-best .519 with 15 kills in the third set, before posting 10 more in the last set.

Ryan Wilcox paced the Gauchos with 16 kills and three aces on a .324 hitting percentage, while Ryan Pecsok had a career-high 17 digs. Randy DeWesse added 12 kills and Donovan Todorov led the team with six block assists.

Spencer Olivier paced LBSU with 18 kills and hit .448, while Aidan Knipe had 38 assists. Simon Andersen had five blocks and Mason Briggs had 14 digs.

from Irvine Business Signs https://ift.tt/2RRZ710
via Irvine Sign Company

signsanaheim

See Full Bio