Beach
sweeps top 15 team
By Gina Ponce
On-line Forty-Niner
A
3-0 sweep against No. 13 ranked UC Santa
Barbara Friday improved the Long Beach State
men’s volleyball team, ranked No. 7, to
9-7 overall and 5-6 Mountain Pacific Sports
Federation.
“You can always pick apart a game, but we
beat a top 15 team in three and there’s
not too much I can pick apart,” head coach
for the 49ers, Alan Knipe, said.
 The
49ers and the Gauchos were both hitting
well in game one. LBSU had 18 kills
and a hitting percentage of .467 while UCSB
hit .379 and had 15 kills. Robert
Tarr contributed five kills and Scott Touzinsky
followed with four for the Beach to help
with the 30-27 win. Despite good hitting,
both teams combined for 13 service errors.
Knipe said that going into the game against
UCSB the 49ers wanted to be real efficient
on serving and limit unforced errors.
Game two started off with a 4-0 run for
Long Beach State. They continued to lead
for most of the game until UCSB pulled ahead
at 25-24. The 49ers kept up their
momentum to get 22 kills in 37 total attempts.
Jeff Wootton and Touzinsky added six kills
each to the game allowing LBSU to hold on
to a late rally and win 32-30.
Tyler Hildebrand, setter for the 49ers,
said serving was one weakness the Gauchos
showed throughout the game. “They didn’t
put a lot of pressure on passers to pass
good balls,” he said.
Hildebrand said his goals for the match
were to “set hittable balls to the outside,
limit my errors, establish the middle and
keep our pins in system.”
Long Beach finished off UCSB in the third
game, holding the Gauchos to a .182 hitting
percentage. The Beach hit at a .375 percentage
and had 18 kills totaling 58 for the match.
Four 49ers completed the game in double
digits for kills. Touzinsky had a
match high of 15 kills and Wootton followed
with 13. Tarr and David Lee contributed
12 and 10.
Knipe said the 49ers have been working on
their block and defense the last couple
of weeks.
“[UCSB] is notorious for playing games with
serving and blocking you don’t usually see,”
Knipe said.
“In the last three weeks David [Lee], Scott
[Touzinsky] and Paul [Munoz] have been very
steady,” Knipe said, “but the important
thing was the play of Jeff [Wootton] last
night. It may be his best game of
the year.”
“Everyone was on the same page tonight and
we limited errors,” Hildebrand said.
Long Beach will see if it can keep the momentum
when it takes on UC San Diego at an away
game Wednesday.
“[UCSD] is well-coached and they’re going
to try and take some things away from us,”
Knipe said. “We need to use our athleticism
to exploit whatever weakness we can.”
“It doesn’t have a lot to do with the opponent
we play, it’s how you come out and start
the match,” Knipe said.
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