The persistent cheer of “Let’s go Waves” propelled No. 3 Pepperdine to a 4-1 win over the No. 10 Long Beach State men’s volleyball team on Thursday night inside the Walter Pyramid.
LBSU (14-12, 10-11 MPSF) took the third set after dropping the first two to Pepperdine (18-4, 13-4 MPSF). Junior outside hitter Cody Martin returned from an abdominal injury, replacing sophomore outside hitter Eric Ensing, who was out with a hand injury.
“We didn’t come out in the first set and execute in transition,” LBSU head coach Alan Knipe said. “That cost us the opportunity to score points. The guys are frustrated and I hope they use that as a chip on their shoulder and turn it into a positive.”
The 49ers traded points with the Waves in the second set. Junior middle blocker John Henry pounded four kills in set two and nine on the night for a .571 hitting percentage. He said the mistakes the 49ers made in the first two sets ultimately cost the team the match.
“[Pepperdine is] a great team, but we really thought we could have taken them for a run,” Henry said. “We can compete with a team like this, and I think it says a lot to where we are going to be.”
LBSU dominated set three, jumping out to an early 11-6 lead after a Pepperdine error and a block from junior middle blocker Taylor Gregory. Junior outside hitter Andrew Whitt slammed down a kill to take the set from the Waves.
Pepperdine senior outside hitter Josh Taylor commanded the first set, crushing five kills on eight swings, and ended the match with ten kills. Taylor said that his team focused on winning each point instead of focusing on the entire match.
“We’re normally a team that feeds off energy and we were a little flat coming out, but once we adjusted that in the fourth set we came out a little more fiery,” Taylor said.
The Waves totaled 18 service errors on the night, 11 coming from the first two sets. Pepperdine head coach Marv Dunphy said LBSU had a great performance and his team was fairly lucky to walk away with the win.
“This wasn’t one of our smoother matches,” Dunphy said. “We made a lot of errors, especially in serving and when we did serve it in we served it kind of easy.”
Knipe said his team has been steadily improving every week and it believes in its performance on the court and that they can be better to get the wins against top ranked teams in the league.
“It hurt a little bit knowing that we left some things on the table and we have to stay big picture right now,” Knipe said. “We played well enough to win, we’re irritated that we didn’t and we’ve got to close the door against teams that are ranked ahead of us.”
The 49ers bounced back when they won two of their next three matchups. LBSU rolled over Stanford in a 3-0 sweep of the Cardinal on March 28 inside the Pyramid, then crushed UC San Diego in another sweep on Saturday.