The Long Beach State men’s volleyball team fell in five sets to UC Santa Barbara, 30-24, 26-30, 31-33, 30-22, 15-13 in a Mountain Pacific Sports Federation contest, Friday at the Walter Pyramid.
The 49ers (5-6, 4-4 MPSF) fell to 1-2 at home and dropped its first match to the Gauchos after winning the previous four meetings.
Senior Dean Bittner’s season-high 38 kills on .320 hitting were not enough to pull his team to victory. Junior Antwain Aguillard contributed 11 kills hitting .471, while Kirk Francis led the defense with 14 digs. Senior Conor Eaton had a season-high 63 assists in the contest.
The Gauchos’ Jeff Menzel’s career-high 34 kills plus 11 digs combined with junior Vince Devany’s season-high 78 assists proved to be too much for the ‘Niners.
After losing the fourth set, the ‘Niners found themselves down 3-1 in the final set. They rallied back to tie the frame at 6-6 off a Bittner kill. Beach head coach Andy Read called a timeout following a 13-10 deficit.
“We always believe we are a serve or a block away,” Read said. “I always want to give them space … To depressurize for a second.”
The 49ers still felt the pressure as UCSB came back out and aced the next serve. The 49ers held off two match points before finally falling, 15-13.
“We’re still a work in progress,” Read said. “We believe we could be as good as anybody … We gotta be ready to play.”
The first-year head coach said in the first set the team started off slow and watched a lot of balls drop. Much of the slow start could be attributed to the red-hot start Jeff Menzel had for UCSB.
“We couldn’t control [Menzel],” Read said.
After going up 2-1, The Beach fell flat in the fourth set, allowing UCSB to hit .500. At that point, UCSB seemed to take control of the match, never allowing LBSU to take the lead again.
LBSU started the match slow losing the first set 30-24 while hitting just .138. The 49ers turned the match around though in the second set behind Bittner’s 12 kills to tie the match up at one set apiece.
The third set proved to be a hard-fought battle. After going point-for-point for most of the set, the 49ers took a small one-point lead towards the end of the set. The Gauchos rallied to stay in the game, but Bittner finished off the 33-31 set with a dominating kill.
The 49ers look to bounce back against Cal Baptist on Thursday, Feb. 18 in a nonconference contest at the Pyramid.