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sports:
women's volleyball
49er women start
in lofty position
Staff reports
The Long Beach
State women's volleyball team pulled rank this week, and the
49ers didn't even have to play an official match to do it.
LBSU, which finished
24-8 last season, was tabbed Wednesday as the favorite to
claim the Big West Conference championship in the annual Big
West coach's poll. All this on top of two prominent volleyball
preseason polls ranking the Beach in the top-10.
The 49ers received
nine out of 10 first-place votes in the Big West coach's poll
to finish with a near unanimous 99 overall points. Pacific,
the defending Big West champion, finished second with 86 points.
UC Santa Barbara,
which garnered the remaining first-place vote, finished third
in the poll with 85 points, with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
(68) and Utah St. (49) rounding out the top five.
Earlier this week,
the LBSU Sports Information Department announced the 49ers
would be ranked No. 3 whenVolleyball Magazine's preview issue
hits newsstands Aug. 20 and also achieved a No. 8-ranking
in the American Volleyball Coaches Association/USA Today poll.
Defending national
champion Nebraska, which visits The Pyramid Sept. 1 to take
on LBSU, is ranked No. 1 in both national polls.
Along with the
contest against the Cornhuskers, LBSU will match up in September
with two other teams ranked in the top-10 of the AVCA/USA
poll: No. 3 Penn St. (Sept. 15) and No. 10 Stanford (Sept.
25).
Stanford is ranked
No. 2 in the Volleyball Magazine poll.
Pacific and UC
Santa Barbara were also ranked in the AVCA/USA poll -- Pacific,
which reached the Final Four last season, was ranked No. 12,
UC Santa Barbara was ranked No. 13.
The 49ers are currently
on a 12-day European tour against club teams from the Netherlands,
Germany and Czechoslovakia. LBSU will open the regular season
against Iowa on Aug. 31 at The Pyramid.
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