The562’s coverage of Long Beach State athletics for the 2023-24 season is sponsored by Marilyn Bohl.
The Long Beach State men’s volleyball team looked every bit of the No. 1 team in America in Saturday night’s match against Concordia, held in the Gold Mine due to the ongoing repair of the Walter Pyramid. The Beach shook off a slow start defensively to dominate Concordia, sweeping them 25-22, 25-19, 25-15.
The match had a decidedly old-school feel with a capacity crowd of more than 1,500 in the historic gym, whose dimensions (especially height) were certainly not designed with the modern volleyball game in mind.
“I want to play in the Pyramid every night, but there’s been a lot of great volleyball and great basketball played in this gym,” said LBSU coach Alan Knipe. “There’s a lot of history to it. WHen you get a good crowd like tonight it’s probably more enjoyable for the crowd than it is for the teams. It was fun–but we don’t need to do it too many more times.”
The Beach would be happy to repeat the performance on the floor, as they outhit their opponent .406 to .221, with 12 aces to Concordia’s zero and nine blocks to Concordia’s four.
Daniil Hershtynovich led the way with 14 kills on .545 hitting, backed up by 10 kills on .562 hitting by Skyler Varga. Sotiris Siapanis only hit .300 but had five kills, four aces, eight digs, and four blocks in a typically stat-stuffing performance.
The Beach held Concordia to .133 and .160 hitting in the second and third sets. LBSU setter Moni Nikolov was a show-stealer as always, with four aces, four kills, 32 assists, and a block. At one point during a dominant service run in the third set, the Concordia coach tried to call a timeout as he began his approach, which the officials did not allow. The always fiery Siapanis yelled “no!” at the Concordia coach, just as Nikolov smoked a 76 miles per hour serve that hit the Concordia libero to score an ace.
“There’s a lot of people following our team, there’s a lot of people following Moni,” said Knipe. “There’s a lot of really good things we’re doing. We’ve just got to continue to string them together and keep the foot on the pedal.”
The Beach will travel to Pepperdine for a match against the Waves Sunday evening. The two schools have had an epic rivalry for most of their history, but Sunday’s match comes as the Malibu community is reeling from wildfires.
“We’ve talked about it when it was going on,” said Knipe. “I think we realize the importance of life and real life situations.”
Knipe said that there’s a plan for men’s volleyball and Long Beach State to do something later this season to benefit the volleyball community in the impacted areas.
“We want to do something substantial and that means something and help as many people as we possibly can,” he said.
