The562’s coverage of Long Beach State athletics for the 2024-25 season is sponsored by Marilyn Bohl.
The Long Beach State men’s volleyball team’s perfect start to the 2025 season came to a jolting halt on Friday night in the Walter Pyramid. The Beach came away smarting from the Black and Blue rivalry match with No. 5 UC Irvine, as the Anteaters took advantage of uncharacteristically weak serving by the Beach, winning a close first set and then pulling away for a sweep, 27-25, 25-19, 25-19.
“You obviously have to give Irvine a ton of credit, they played a great match,” said LBSU coach Alan Knipe. “We had every opportunity to win that first set…and then I would have liked to have seen a better response by us, and our guys know that.”
The Beach were outhit .472 to .274 and had no blocks in the match, something Knipe said he couldn’t remember happening before. The Beach fell behind quickly in the second and third set in a match where they were out-served, outhit, outblocked (7 to 0) and out-dug (19-17).
“The beautiful thing in this situation is that you play them again tomorrow night and you get an opportunity to respond,” said Knipe.
Particularly concerning for the Beach was a bad night from the end-line. The team’s depth in the service game has been its strength this year, but they put up four aces to 22 service errors on Friday, and could do almost nothing to get Irvine out of system (they hit .472 and had no balls blocked). The Beach also had 18 hitting errors in the match, meaning 40 of Irvine’s 75 points came via service or hitting error.
“It’s a game of fractions of an inch, and there were a number of serves we missed tonight that were barely out,” said Knipe. “Those are the ones that are tough…then we mix in some bad errors and some guys maybe not hitting it on the way up, missing into the net. And you’re pushing, you’re pressing a little bit because you don’t want to miss multiple times as a team.”
The Beach ended up doing just that, at one point hitting three consecutive service errors in that deadlocked first set. The second and third set’s weak response was of bigger concern to Knipe and his players. Skyler Varga said he thought the Beach was “timid” in responding to the Anteaters. Setter Moni Nikolov said he felt some “tightness” in the team.
“We didn’t stay within who we are long enough,” said Knipe. “As a group, we kind of fractured, and that doesn’t happen very often with us. We gotta be willing to stay within the unit, and the power of the unit will help us every time.”
The Beach were led by 13 kills on .391 hitting from Varga; Nikolov had four kills, 32 assists, three aces, and five digs. The Beach’s supporting cast was not strong. Sebastian Sani ended up benched for Alex Kandev as the team looked for another offensive spark, and normally-steady Daniil Hershtynovich had just seven kills on .059 hitting, with six hitting errors.
Irvine got a great night from reigning National Player of the Year Hilir Henno, who had nine kills, six digs, and three aces. William D’Arcy also had nine kills for the Anteaters.
The two teams will square off against in Irvine Saturday evening at 7pm.
