Long Beach State men's volleyball sweeps into NCAA Final Four

Before the season started, the Long Beach State men’s volleyball team knew where it wanted to end, with the program’s second NCAA national championship. After a quick sweep of Erskine on Tuesday afteoon at Pe State’s Rec Hall, the 49ers are now just two wins away from making that dream come true. They swept past the Flying Fleet in their NCAA opener, 25-14, 27-25, 25-20.

The win puts No. 4 Long Beach State into the NCAA Final Four, where it will face top-ranked BYU at 3 p.m. Thursday.

“It’s exciting to move on,” said Long Beach State head coach Alan Knipe. “I thought we did some good things tonight. We hit .528 as a team and we got better every set.”

The 49ers chaeled two weeks of nervous energy into the match’s first set, blowing the doors off Rec Hall and holding Erskine to .091 hitting and just eight kills with six hitting errors.

In the second set, Erskine responded in a big way, while Long Beach State looked content with the big victory in the first frame. Erskine led for most of the second and held a 19-18 advantage. Long Beach State rebounded thanks to a service error and a big kill from freshman TJ DeFalco, and eventually took a 2-0 lead.

“Erskine responded really well in the second set and I thought we let our foot off the gas a little bit,” said Knipe, who still saw that as a positive. “We got a little stress in that second set, which was good. We had to show some composure playing with anxiety and I think we played better because of that.”

The third set was an offensive master class from setter Josh Tuaniga, who orchestrated a 49ers attack that saw them hit .700, with 13 kills on 18 swings with zero hitting errors. It’s not a surprise that the team had no hitting errors, since Tuaniga’s sets had them swinging against an open net most of the time.

The 49ers were led by Tuaniga’s 40 assists (the team hit .588 on balls he set), as well as excellent efforts from the AVCA Newcomer of the Year DeFalco (14 kills, five blocks) and Kyle Ensing (11 kills). Erskine was led by outside hitter Michael Michelau, who had 14 kills on 31 swings and .194 hitting.

The win sets up a rematch with BYU, currently the nation’s top-ranked team and the top seed into this year’s NCAA Touament. The 49ers and Cougars played a pair of matches earlier this year, splitting the back-to-back contests at the Pyramid.

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“That feels like a long time ago,” said Knipe. “They beat us, we beat them. It’s exactly what it should be for an NCAA semifinal.”

First serve for Thursday’s match is scheduled for 3 p.m., and the match will be streamed live for free on NCAA.com.