The No. 23 Long Beach State women’s volleyball team held onto its perfect record in the Big West Conference by beating UC Riverside and UC Davis in the Walter Pyramid over the weekend.
The 49ers (18-4, 8-0 Big West) trounced UCR in three sets and UCD in four, giving the ‘Niners an 11-1 record inside the Pyramid.
“The good news is we’re 8-0; the bad news is it’s only the first half,” head coach Brian Gimmillaro said. “We are playing faster; we are playing together. I appreciate how hard they’re working.”
LBSU swept UCR (2-18, 0-8 Big West) Friday night 25-13, 25-14 and 25-15.
“Overall I thought we played pretty well,” Gimmillaro said. “I just thought that we were anxious all night wanting to do so well. We were pretty much in control. We could’ve done better, but we did okay.”
Defense wasn’t an issue in the match for the 49ers who totaled 10 team blocks while the Highlanders had four. The Beach hit .213 and held UCR to -.066 hitting.
“[Our] hitting percentage is way too low,” Gimmillaro said. “We’ve got to do a better job putting the ball away. We just made too many mistakes.”
Senior middle blocker Chisom Okpala and junior outside hitter Alex Reid led the match with nine kills each. Okpala also added five blocks, while Reid pitched in 11 digs. The Highlanders’ Ashley Cox and Alex Gresham led their team with six kills each.
UCD (10-11, 5-3 Big West) came into the match against LBSU tied for second place in the conference with Hawai’i; the 49ers are now in first place.
The 49ers were able to stay on top after the second set and took the match 25-21, 17-25, 25-22 and 25-20.
“It took a lot of focus,” libero and co-captain Tyler Jackson said. “I felt like our team was really surprised. Not that we thought they weren’t a good team, but we just didn’t expect them to be as [good] as they [were].”
The Beach hit .308 in the second set, but the Aggies surpassed that with .429. UCD also led with seven service aces compared to zero for LBSU.
“They had a really good serving strategy,” Gimmillaro said, “but I’ve been coaching a long time, so I told the players after [set 2] to trust me. They were doing something they hadn’t done before in their serving; but we did it, and it worked well enough.”
Aggies’ head coach Dan Connors talked about the effectiveness of LBSU’s playing that led to his team’s loss.
“I think we shot ourselves in the foot a lot making some mistakes that are out of character, but all that is because Long Beach affected us,” he said. “They affected us with their serving, with their blocks and their defense, and they made some good adjustments after the second set. We didn’t figure it out at that point.”
Okpala and Reid both led the team again with 11 kills each. Okpala and senior Bre Mackie led the team with five blocks each.
The Aggies’ outside hitter Kaylin Squyres led the match with 18 kills, and outside hitter Allie Wegener added 11. Middle blocker Aima Eichie led the entire match with nine blocks.
Jackson had 20 digs in this match, which surpassed former LBSU All-American and Olympian Misty May-Treanor in career-high digs with 1,295 and ranks fifth in LBSU program history for most career digs.
“I think Long Beach does a great job [with its] passing. Tyler, their libero, she’s a stud. She’s a great player,” Connors said.
LBSU will take on CSUN next Saturday in the Matadome at 7 p.m.