LA JOLLA, Calif. – The No. 10 UC San Diego men's volleyball team was swept by top-ranked Long Beach State Friday on Senior Night with a record crowd in attendance at LionTree Arena.
Set scores were 25-23, 25-10, and 25-22 in favor of the Beach.
The 3,850 fans in attendance comprised the venue's first-ever sellout for a men's volleyball match.
The Tritons fell to 17-10 overall and 3-6 in the Big West. Long Beach State improved to 25-2 and 7-2.
The nine Triton seniors - Anthony Cherfan, Bryce Dvorak, Sebastian Lara, Matthew Lim, Brett Pursley, Nick Rigo, Josh Schellinger, Peter Selcho, and Sam Warren - were honored prior to the match.
The two teams meet again Saturday in Long Beach to close out the regular season.
HOW IT HAPPENED
UC San Diego hit .186 with 29 kills and 16 errors in 70 attack attempts. It was just the fourth time this season the team hit under .200. Long Beach State countered at .444 (43-11-72).
The Beach also had advantages in aces (4-1), assists (40-29), and digs (20-15). Both teams finished with four blocks.
For the Tritons, Schellinger led on offense with nine kills, with Warren contributing another six. Dvorak recorded 26 assists and a service ace.
Long Beach State got 16 kills from Nato Dickinson and another 10 from Alex Kandev. Kandev hit .500 and Dickinson came in at .423.
The Tritons fielded an all-senior lineup to start the match, which kicked off with a Schellinger kill off the opening serve, a Warren-Selcho block, and a Dvorak service ace to go up 3-0. The hosts kept their seniors rotating and firing enough kills to force a Long Beach timeout at 14-11. Warren dropped four kills out of the timeout to keep the Tritons ahead and the Beach called another timeout at 22-18. The break proved pivotal as Long Beach recorded four consecutive kills to tie the game. A Triton attack error gave the visitors the lead before a pair of Beach kills ended the first set 25-23 in the visitor's favor.
The Beach kept the momentum in the second set, drawing a 6-2 run to prompt an early UC San Diego timeout. The Tritons recorded its first attacking point with a Lara kill to make it 11-5. However, Long Beach continued to wedge a lead, at one point going on a 6-0 run to make it 20-7. An attack error gave the visitors a 25-10 set win and 2-0 set lead. The Tritons gave up six attack error points during the set.
Leo Pravednikov provided some support in the third set with two of UC San Diego's first five kills. A pair of Schellinger power bombs got the hosts within one before a Triton timeout at an 11-8 Beach advantage. The two sides went point-for-point out of the break before a service and attack error got the Tritons back within one at 15-14. Long Beach kills proved too much for UC San Diego, however, as the visitors capped off the 25-22 set with a power slam.
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UP NEXT
UC San Diego closes out its regular season Saturday at Long Beach State. The match is slated for a 7 p.m. start at Walter Pyramid in Long Beach.
The Big West Championship is set for April 24-26 in Honolulu. All six conference teams compete for the league's automatic berth in the NCAA Championship.
About UC San Diego Athletics
After two decades as one of the most successful programs in NCAA Division II, the UC San Diego intercollegiate athletics program began a new era in 2020 as a member of The Big West Conference in NCAA Division I. The 23-sport Tritons earned 30 team and nearly 150 individual national championships during its time in Divisions II and III and helped guide 1,400 scholar-athletes to All-America honors. A total of 84 Tritons have earned Academic All-America honors, while 38 have earned prestigious NCAA Post Graduate Scholarships. UC San Diego scholar-athletes exemplify the academic ideals of one of the world's preeminent institutions, graduating at an average rate of 90 percent, the highest rate among public institutions in Divisions I and II.
