On Sunday evening, the No. 16 Long Beach State women’s volleyball team sat lined up in front of a crowd of fans that came to watch who, when and where the team would play in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
LBSU (24-6, 16-0 Big West Conference) will play the University of San Diego (19-11, 12-6 West Coast Conference) on Friday, Dec. 5 at 5:30 p.m. at the Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles.
“That’s not a surprise,” head coach Brian Gimmillaro said. “We figured we’d go to UCLA, we figured we’d play a WCC team – either Loyola [Marymount] or San Diego, and we figured the fourth team would be an eastern team brought in.”
The 49ers first round matchup was the very last to be announced, and it was an exact repeat of their first round 2011 NCAA Tournament matchup.
“I thought that was a good team,” Gimmillaro said. “I think this is a much better team now. The leadership is good, the skill level is good and we get potential scoring from several positions.”
LBSU finished the Big West season with back-to-back sweeps of OC rivals UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton last week.
After two seasons of failing to appear in the NCAA Tournament, the 49ers have become the ninth team to earn an undefeated Big West season, and this is LBSU’s fifth unbeaten conference season.
“It’s just nice to finally get rewarded for all our hard work,” senior Bre Mackie said.
Since the five-set win over Hawaii on Nov. 7, the ‘Niners have swept all six of their remaining opponents, and hold a 19-set win streak.
In the last two games of conference play, the 49ers defeated UC Irvine (19-12, 9-7 Big West) 25-19, 25-20 and 25-17, and dominated CSUF (8-21, 2-14 Big West) 25-16, 25-10 and 25-13.
The team held its senior night against CSUF, and after the win, the team celebrated with the fans by giving out balls, posing for pictures and wearing their medals.
Gimmillaro said he’s never thrown a celebration like that before.
“We weren’t very good in the beginning, and just the effort from everyone was vital to our development,” Gimmillaro said.
Despite the success the team has had this season, Mackie said there’s always room for improvement.
“We still have stuff to work on, and we kind of found that out tonight [against CSUF],” Mackie said. “We gave a lot away, a lot of points, and we can’t let [opponents] earn points off our errors.”
The team has come a long way since the beginning of the season, and it all started with a goal.
“What this team talked about was the first goal, [which] was to get to the playoffs – win the conference, which guaranteed us to get there,” Gimmillaro said. “The biggest goal was to improve, and now the goal is to win the next match. It’s win or go home. The idea is to out-prepare, out-play and go on to the next round.”
Gimmillaro talked about the idea of gratitude and how lucky and fortunate they were in receiving the opportunity to play in the NCAA Tournament.
“It sure would be exciting for our school and our program to go to somebody’s home and beat them at their home, especially here in Southern California,” Gimmillaro said.
The 49ers will head to the Pauley Pavilion to face USD on Friday at 5:30 p.m; on Saturday, the winner of Friday’s match will play the victor between No. 12 UCLA and Long Island University-Brooklyn.