FAIRFAX, Va. - Fourth-ranked Big West regular-season co-champion Long Beach State was simply unable to get anything going in falling to No. 1 national seed UCLA, 3-0, in the first semifinal of the 2023 National Collegiate Men’s Volleyball Championship on Thursday evening at EagleBank Arena. Set scores were 25-16, 25-14 and 25-19.
George Mason University is serving as host of the week-long, seven-team event for the first time in 33 years, since the 1990 edition.
The result caps Long Beach State’s 2023 campaign at 21-5. The Beach were at-large qualifiers for a second year in succession, and are 19-11 after a 13th National Collegiate Championship appearance. Second-ranked UCLA, the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) regular-season and tournament double champion and automatic entrant, improves to 30-2 following a season-best 11th win in a row.
The Bruins swept the home-and-home series earlier this year between the area rivals, with a sweep at home on Feb. 9 and a come-from-behind four-set triumph in Long Beach the next night. LBSU ended UCLA’s 2022 season on its home court inside Pauley Pavilion via reverse sweep, also in the national semifinals, last May 5, 2022.
An ace by Alex Knight gave UCLA a 9-5 advantage early in the first frame. The set was not tied again after 2-2, with the Beach holding the slimmest of edges, 1-0 and 2-1, before the Bruins gradually took control.
UCLA used a 4-0 run that featured two straight kills by Knight and then two in a row by Ido David, and trotted out to an 11-5 lead in the second set that forced Long Beach State head coach Alan Knipe into a timeout. Coming out of the break, two Beach miscues made it a 6-0 spurt and 13-5 bulge. LBSU never led in the frame.
The third set was tied four times by 4-4, with the Bruins then leading by either one or two points through 12-10. That’s around when another 4-0 burst put UCLA up 15-10 at the media timeout. True freshman setter Andrew Rowan, the AVCA Newcomer of the Year out of Trabuco Canyon, had three straight kills followed by an Ethan Champlin kill during the run. Ido’s kill made it a 5-0 stretch out of the break, for a 16-10 advantage. Three consecutive Beach points through a Spencer Olivier kill, combination block by Aidan Knipe and Simon Torwie, and a Nathan Harlan ace, forced UCLA’s first timeout of the night. A Torwie kill closed the deficit to two at 16-14, but the Beach could get no closer.
Sotiris Siapanis led LBSU offensively with 10 kills. Knipe dished out 26 assists. Torwie provided three kills, three block assists and an ace. Olivier contributed seven kills, five digs and three block assists in a final collegiate match for the sixth-year senior outside hitter.
David led all players with 17 kills, hitting .625 (17-2-24). Rowan wound up with 40 assists, five digs and three kills while the Bruins attacked at a .458 (47-9-83) clip as a team. Champlin had 14 kills with one error on 21 swings (.619), to go with five digs, two aces, one block and three set assists. Knight wound up with six kills, three block assists and two aces.
UCLA, LBSU’s former MPSF rival, is the record 19-time national champion, but has not lifted the trophy in over a decade, since 2006. The Bruins’ John Speraw was named Tuesday as the AVCA National Coach of the Year. They advance to face either top-ranked No. 2 national seed and two-time reigning champion Hawai’i or third-ranked Penn State in Saturday’s title tilt at 2 p.m. PT on ESPN2.