Long Beach State men’s volleyball returned to action after its bye week and swept the UCSD Tritons in three sets at the Walter Pyramid on Friday night, improving to 5-0 in Big West Conference play.
LBSU came into Friday night’s Big West matchup ranked No. 1 in the nation for the second straight week in a row and will likely keep that honor next week after their impressive performance against the Tritons.
It was tightly contested early on in the first set as both teams delivered blows, but The Beach took a 5-0 run into the first timeout of the match and led the match 11-7.
UCSD tried to pull off a late comeback in the set, but The Beach held them off as junior middle blocker DiAeris McRaven and junior outside hitter Skyler Varga combined for a block to clinch the first set for The Beach by a score of 25-17.
The second set started like the first set as it was close early, but Long Beach State pulled away midway through and never looked back, winning the second set by a score of 25-15 after a UCSD service error.
Junior outside hitter Sotiris Siapanis and Varga combined for nine kills in the second set.
“I thought everyone played really well, kinda firing on all cylinders it was a great match,” Varga said. “San Diego is a great team so I thought all around we played well.”
Varga led The Beach in kills with 10 and tallied an ace with eight block assists.
“There was a lot of transfer from our training gym and what our goals were for the week that were into the match tonight, and also the vibe and energy of the guys with and how hard they played,” head coach Alan Knipe said.
The third set finished with a score of 25-15 in favor of The Beach as they separated from their conference foe. McRaven put the exclamation point on the match with a kill on the match point, clinching a sweep of the Tritons.
Redshirt senior setter Aidan Knipe led the match with 28 assists and set up Varaga throughout the match.
“Our middles were great hitting over .500, Skyler did a great job coming and passing the ball when he needs to serve, block and attack every kind of front he was great,” Aidan Knipe said. “When the passing is this good, it makes my job really easy.”
The Beach will travel to San Diego for game two of the series tomorrow night at the LionTree Arena at 7 p.m.