The562’s coverage of Long Beach State athletics for the 2024-25 season is sponsored by Marilyn Bohl.
The No. 1 Long Beach State men’s volleyball team put the finishing touches on an impressive regular season Saturday night with a win over No. 10 UC San Diego in their final home game. The Beach swept the Tritons 25-12, 25-21, 25-18 in front of a sold-out Walter Pyramid on senior night, clinching their first outright Big West regular season championship since 2022.
Long Beach State will now head to Hawaii next week for the Big West men’s volleyball tournament, where they’ll play the winner of UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbra in the semifinals on Friday at 7:30 pst.
“It’s special for us tonight,” said LBSU coach Alan Knipe. “These guys had such a dialed in and professional approach and we showed that. They kept their foot on the pedal for most of the night and I’m glad they could end it. Big West champs in front of their home crowd, these are always fun nights. It never gets old.”
The win marks The Beach’s sixth straight victory over UC San Diego, and they haven’t lost a set to the Tritons since 2022.
Long Beach spread the ball around all night and outhit the visitors .468 to UC San Diego’s .105. Standout setter Moni Nikolov had 35 assists while also throwing in six kills and three aces. Skylar Varga matched the game-high in kills with 12, hitting .550. DiAeris McRaven hit a game-high .714 with five kills, and fellow senior Nato Dickinson had eight.
“It’s just (our) ability to have range and trust (our) weapons,” Knipe said of his dynamic offense. “You don’t wanna just have one shot. The old saying is that there’s a million ways to get a kill. When we’re at our best our guys are mixing up their shots, whether it’s hard, roll shots, or tips, whatever it may be and all of our guys hit with good range tonight.”
The Beach also heavily outblocked the Tritons with 24 block-assists and a solo block from Varga. UC San Diego went the entire game without a block.
“We felt like (yesterday) there were some opportunities we let get away,” said Knipe of the team’s block. “We dialed a few things in, watched a ton of video, and we set a pretty high standard for ourselves to pay a little bit more attention to detail…They did a great job blocking the ball.”
UC San Diego was led by Josh Schellinger who matched a game-high 12 kills while Peter Selcho had six. Sam Warren had five kills and Long Beach Wilson alum Leo Pravednikov had four. Bryce Dvorak had 26 assists.
Despite being unanimously ranked No. 1 in the nation since January, the Beach still haven’t been at full strength since midway through the season. LBSU has most notably been without injured senior outside hitter Sotiris Siapanis, and they were also without starting opposite Daniil Hershtynovich in both matches against UC San Diego.
“We felt really good about the guys that we put on the court this weekend but hopefully we get both (Siapanis and Hershtynovich) back for the tournament,” said Knipe. “That would be great. The way it’s tracking right now, I’m pretty confident we’ll be as close to full-strength as we’ve been all year.”
The Beach can clinch a spot in the NCAA tournament if they pull of a win at the Big West championship in Hawaii next week, or else they’ll have to hope for a potential at-large bid. This year, the NCAA championship will take place in Columbus, Ohio, from 5/8-5/12 .
“We take a lot of pride in trying to make sure that we understand there’s an end date to this thing,” Knipe said. “We’ll time out, but it’s not because we don’t think we can continue to get better. We’re gonna push that as far as we can and see how good we can get to be playing the best brand of volleyball. That’s a commitment we have to ourselves and the commitment we have to our fans.”
