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The Long Beach State men’s volleyball team is so good, it’s hard for fans and media to not try and nitpick the Beach a little bit. The team improved to 20-0 on the season last night with a big sweep of NJIT on the second evening of a back-to-back. The Beach are the unanimous No. 1 team in the nation, and as a sign of how dominant they’ve been, it was pretty big news in the men’s volleyball world that they dropped a set to NJIT the night before–their first time not sweeping an opponent since Feb. 7.
Asked if he gets annoyed at questions about losing a set in the midst of a historic 20-0 start–the team’s best since their 2019 national title campaign–LBSU head coach Alan Knipe laughed.
“As a coach when you get to the point that people’s expectations are so high that they ask questions like that and you get annoyed, that’s a good problem,” said Knipe. “For me it’s just next question and move on. But I appreciate the passion people have.”
The Beach certainly played with plenty of passion Saturday, easily sweeping the Highlanders 25-18, 25-13, 25-20.
The Beach outhit their opponent .382 to .044, as freshman star Moni Nikolov guided the Beach attack with 28 assists, as well as 8 kills on .636 hitting, five aces, a dig and four blocks. Nikolov continues to rocket up the all-time single season NCAA aces charts, as he’s got 75 now on the season, with eight regular season matches still on the schedule.
Skyler Varga had 10 kills on .381 hitting and also punched home an ace.
Making the Beach’s run even more impressive is that they’ve done it in spite of several key injuries, including outside hitter Sotiris Siapanis and middle blocker Lazar Bouchkov. Knipe didn’t have a return date for those players but said he’s expecting all the injured players for the Beach to return this season. In the meantime, the Beach offense and serve game continue to hum along without missing a beat.
“I think we’re starting to finally gel together really well,” said Varga. “I think with the new additions at first it takes time stepping into those roles. But I think we’re all doing a great job with it and I think we’re pretty confident going into conference.”
The Beach now begin the toughest part of their schedule, with two matches against UC Irvine next week, and a road trip to Hawaii looming in a few weeks.
“I think we’re very far from where we can play, these last two games we definitely played at a pretty bad level for us,” said Nikolov. “For what we show every day in training. So we need to really focus, we got to really lock in and get our best, because Irvine is a really solid team and with playoffs coming soon we got to really start performing.”
The Beach got nine kills from Daniil Hershtynovich, eight from Nikolov, six from Ben Braun, and four apiece from Sebastiano Sani and DiAeris McRaven. Braun had eight blocks, Sebastian Rodriguez and Hershtynovich both had six digs, and the Beach unblocked the Highlanders 12.5 to four.
Long Beach State will host No. 5 Irvine Friday at 7pm then travel to face the Anteaters Saturday at 7pm.
