The Long Beach State women’s volleyball team needed all of junior outside hitter Nele Barber’s career night to defeat Cal Poly 3-2 on Saturday at the Walter Pyramid.
The Mustangs (15-5, 7-2) got off to a hot start against LBSU (17-5, 7-2), jumping out to a quick 2-0 lead.
“Sometimes when you believe you should win the first set [and don’t], sometimes there’s a hangover,” Gimmilaro said. “And there was a big hangover there.”
Cal Poly won the first set 27-25 after the 49ers dropped a 24-23 lead. The Mustangs came out firing in set two and jumped to a quick 4-0 lead that LBSU never recovered from, losing the set 25-14.
Barber only had six kills and seven digs at the break before she erupted in the final three sets; she added 18 kills and 13 digs down the stretch and finished with career highs in kills (24) and digs (20). Barber said sticking to the game plan and playing harder were the keys to the comeback.
“I think we brought some more energy,” Barber said. “ I can’t speak for [my teammates], personally I was just running faster.”
The 49ers took sets three and four 25-21 and 25-23 to silence a loud Cal Poly crowd in the Pyramid. The Mustangs led 13-10 in the final set before LBSU scored four unanswered points to take the lead. Both teams traded points, and freshman outside hitter Carly Beddingfield and senior setter Jenelle Hudson strung together two points that gave the 49ers a 19-17 win in set five.
LBSU also swept UC Santa Barbara on Friday behind Beddingfield’s 12 kills.
UCSB hung around with LBSU who needed overtime to take set one, 26-24. Beddingfield led the team with 5 kills and hitter Megan Kruidhof led with 8 digs after hitting her career high last weekend.
“I don’t know how we pulled off that first set, but we did,” Beddingfield said. “The hardest part of the game is getting out of runs. If you start losing points after points it gets hard to dig yourself out of that and get momentum going and I think we did a really good job of finally learning how to come out of that.”
Set two was tied up most of the match with no team leading by more than 2 points ahead of the other, however LBSU was able to break away and take set two 25-18. Middle blocker Ashley Murray led the set with 4 kills and Kruidhof added 3 more digs in the second set bringing her total to 11.
LBSU was able to control the ball in the third set with clean passing, taking the set 25-18 again. Beddingfield led the team in kills with 12 and right behind her was Murray with 11 kills of the night. Kruidhof surpassed her career high in digs with 15 and outside hitter Nele Barber finished with 8 kills; it’s the first game the German native finishes with single digit kills.
“We put ourselves in a nice place in set one and we didn’t finish it out,” UCSB head coach Nicole Welch said. “We need to be sharper and more aggressive at the critical points.”
The 49ers head to UC Irvine and UC Davis on Thursday and Saturday respectively. Both games begin at 7 p.m.