The562’s coverage of Long Beach State athletics for the 2023-24 season is sponsored by Marilyn Bohl.
There are becoming fewer and fewer ways to put it: The Long Beach State men’s volleyball team is simply on fire. The Beach kept its undefeated season going on Friday night inside of the Walter Pyramid, improving to 17-0 after an eighth-straight sweep against visiting CSUN. LBSU won 25-17, 25-14, 25-18.
The Beach led in every statistical category against CSUN on Friday night, much to the joy of LBSU coach Alan Knipe. Knipe said after the game that he was especially pleased to see his team carry out his points of emphasis during this week’s practices, which started with another special performance from behind the end line. The team’s serve combined for 13 aces on .757 serving.
“Tonight was all about our serving. The best part about that is that it was a big emphasis the entire week,” he said. “[And it] was all the other pieces that we worked on with it; our transition, our blocking, our defense. When you win the serve and pass battle, you win the dig battle, and you win the block battle when that’s been the emphasis, that’s a huge piece of the match.”
Skyler Varga was a big piece of The Beach’s momentum on the serve, racking up four aces through his game-high 17 serves on .706 serving. Varga had two separate service runs of six and five points in the second set, and also finished the game with six kills on .600 hitting.
“My serving has been feeling off the past couple of weeks but I know that we keep talking about it and [Knipe] keeps reassuring me that everyone’s got my back. I’m a good server and I know I’m a good server. I know I can go back there and rip my serve and today it definitely felt comfortable.”
The Beach’s block contributed to another lopsided stat of 19 blocks to the Matador’s four, which has been another point of emphasis for The Beach through its streak of success. Middle blocker DiAeris McRaven contributed a game-high five of those blocks, and credited the block’s success to their preparation. McRaven also finished with six kills and no errors on offense.
“I think it’s just making sure that we study the opponent,” said McRaven. “I try to make an emphasis on watching the setter and trying to pick up a lot of his tells…We had a game plan for every serve receive row they were in, so as long as we followed the game plan that we had in mind it generally was pretty simple for us to do what we needed to do tonight.”
The 6-foot-8 standout setter Moni Nikolov also had his normal share of bright moments and racked up 30 assists and a game-high seven aces. The freshman had a key three-point service run in the third set to regain the lead for the Beach, including a point that saw Nikolov fly over the front row of fans to keep a ball in play. Nikolov returned to the center of the court on the same point and delivered an assist to Daniil Hershtynovich, before jogging over to celebrate with the fan who cleared his seat for him to make the play.
Hershtynovich led the team in kills with 12, while Nato Dickinson and Varga each had six. The Beach hit their best of .500 in the third set and finished the game hitting .387 while holding CSUN to .016 hitting.
Long Beach State will return to the Walter Pyramid on Saturday night against Princeton.
