Long Beach State able to sweep UC San Diego in three games on Wednesday night at the Walter Pyramid despite being down for more than half of the second set.
The ‘Niners (14-4, 12-3 MPSF) started the first set of the night by playing textbook volleyball. Junior Dalton Ammerman opened up the match for LBSU with one of his nine kills off of a set from Connor Olbright.
The Tritons kept it close in the early stages of the set until junior Taylor Crabb tallied his fourth kill of the night. After a UCSD hit sailed out of bounds the Tritons were forced into their first timeout of the night with the score 11-7 LBSU.
From that point on it was all LBSU, as it went on a 7-3 run and extended its lead to 18-10 after another precision kill from Crabb.
“I think we hit .500 as a team, so the Tritons’ block couldn’t really key in on one guy, so the net was open for me the whole time because of our team,” Crabb said.
Crabb would end the first set with eight kills, leading his team to a 25-15 win.
The second stanza of the night was the polar opposite of the first, and saw LBSU falling behind early due to uncharacteristic errors.
“Early on we didn’t pass the ball very well,” head coach Alan Knipe said. “We had some communication errors, we didn’t take very good care of the ball and we didn’t execute our serve or receive very well. We got ourselves in a hole.”
The Tritons found the early spurt they were looking for with back-to-back kills from sophomore Nick Iorfino. Iorfino finished the night hitting a team high 11 kills.
After going down by five points in the set Coach Knipe utilized a timeout to try to corral his wayward team.
“There were three or four opportunities that we had to take care of the ball that we didn’t that led directly to points for them,” Knipe said.
Although frustrated with his teams play, Knipe saw the Triton surge to be expected after a lackluster first set.
“After you win a set, generally there’s going to be some sort of response from the other team,” Knipe said. “You’re going to see a personnel change, a rotation change or a tactical change. I don’t think we gave that enough credit tonight in set two.”
With the set still less than halfway through Long Beach State began to crawl its way back into contention. First, a kill by Jeff Ornee , followed by two more ‘Niner kills and finally an Olbright ace had the ‘Niners within a point of the Tritons. On the next serve LBSU was able to force an awkward hit from a UCSD player that resulted in an LBSU point and the score tied at 10.
The Tritons would jump back into the lead again, but never by more than two. Senior Colton Echave forced the Tritons into a timeout after he sent a punishing serve that caused a mishit from UCSD, making the score tied again at 17 a piece.
From then on it was a sea-saw battle from both teams. The Tritons had LBSU cornered multiple times with set point, but clutch kills down the stretch from Ammerman and Crabb kept the ‘Niners alive as the score went into extra points.
After a Dalton kill put LBSU up 27-26, the Tritons were called for a controversial net violation that allowed the ‘Niners to come away with a grueling 28-26 second set win.
The third and final set of the night saw Taylor Crabb capping off a career high night in kill proficiency with 16 kills and zero errors.
Long Beach State led the whole time in the third set and was able to maintain dominance at the net by way of Freshman Taylor Gregory who recorded seven blocks on the night.
Dalton Ammerman secured the 25-20 sweep for the ‘Niners by hitting his ninth kill of the evening.
The ‘Niners now hope to keep their six game winning streak alive as they look forward to hosting the No. 2 ranked UC Irvine Anteaters on Saturday night at 7 p.m. in the Walter Pyramid.