LBSU men’s volleyball will face CSUN, in a game The Beach enters as the number one blocking team in the nation and looks to extend its win streak to five games as the season comes down to the final two series.
The Beach played the UCSD Tritons in back-to-back matches on Friday, Mar. 31, and Saturday, Apr. 1 sweeping both.
The series started in La Jolla, where The Beach took control of the game and led in all stats. Hitting .300 as a team and holding the Tritons to -.024. Junior opposite hitter Simon Torwie had a career night recording 10 kills and being named the Big West Defensive Player of the Week, while freshman setter Island Doty made his first career start recording 3 kills and hitting .340.
“We were putting the best product on the floor and that meant using some different guys to make sure that we weren’t putting some guys out there who weren’t healthy enough to go or couldn’t go both nights,” head coach Alan Knipe said.
Game two was no different for The Beach who held the Tritons on the negative side of the hitting stat and as a team hit a season-high .554. The Beach recorded 15 blocks that night eight of which came from redshirt senior outside hitter Spencer Olivier marking his career high.
“Spencer has always been a really good blocker. He’s gotten significantly better each year, but it’s always been one of the strong things of his game,” Knipe said. “There’s times that you can use his size and almost use him as a middle blocker and then he got going on this weekend and really got on some on some good tendencies and scored points for us.”
LBSU now looks to No. 15 CSUN, the two-game series starts on the road at Northridge Friday at 7 p.m. before returning to the Walter Pyramid on Saturday night.
“My job is to make sure the only thing that matters for us this week is our improvement our prep for the week and stay totally invested in the opponent we’re going to play this week and that’s it,” Knipe said.