There was a rare sense of order in men’s volleyball on Friday, as the higher-ranked teams all won, both in league matches and non-conference affairs.
The most significant NCAA men’s Division I-II outcome was No. 3 BYU sweeping visiting No. 4 Hawai’i.
Saturday is busy both in men’s indoors and women’s NCAA beach.
In the MPSF, the slate includes No. 9 Pepperdine at No. 8 Stanford. Hawai’i gets another shot at BYU, top-ranked Long Beach State entertains Sacred Heart of the EIVA, No. 6 UCLA plays host to Concordia, and Cal Baptist goes to Saint Francis of the EIVA.
The MIVA has has a big one with No. 2 Ohio State at No. 7 Lewis in a must-win for Lewis. Fort Wayne plays at Grand Canyon. Two others are out of conference as Quincy goes to King of Conference Carolinas and Ball State entertains Alderson Broaddus.
Also in the EIVA, NJIT plays a conference match at Charleston.
In ConfCarolinas, there are three league matches as Barton goes to Emmanuel, Lees-McRae is at Pfeiffer and Mount Olive plays at Erskine.
MPSF: BYU, Long Beach win conference matches
BYU stayed two games back in the win column of Long Beach as it improved to 18-2, 12-1 with its 28-26, 25-18, 25-20 victory. Hawai’i dropped to 20-3, 10-3, two games ahead of UC Irvine in third place.
BYU had a season-high 12 blocks, hit .440 and held Hawai’i to a .188 hitting percentage.
“Our guys did a lot of good things,” BYU coach Shawn Olmstead said. “Our assistant coaches did a really good job putting a game plan together, and we executed it well. I thought we took good swings, in transitions especially. We really made smart shots. They are a good team.”
Brenden Sander led BYU with 14 kills and hit .440. He had five of his team’s 14 service errors, but also four of those blocks. Jake Langlois added 13 kills, hit .450, had two of the team’s three aces and three errors, five digs and three blocks, one solo.
Hawai’i got 16 of its 36 kills from Stijn van Tilburg, who hit .344. Kupono Fey added 10 kills.
No. 1 Long Beach swept CSUN to improve to 20-2, 14-1, while dropping the home team to 12-12, 5-10.
Kyle Ensing had 17 kills and hit .484 and had three blocks, one solo, and four digs. TJ DeFalco added 12 kills and hit .429. Dimitar Kalchev led CSUN with 10 kills and hit .167 as hit team .150. Long Beach hit .425.
UCLA blasted visiting Sacred Heart 25-15, 25-19, 25-15. The Bruins improved to 14-7 as they won their fourth in a row. Dylan Missry led with 10 kills as he hit .625. For that matter, UCLA out-hit Saint Francis .380 to .016.
Also, No. 13 Penn State of the EIVA had to struggle to beat last-place Cal Baptist 26-24, 25-16, 23-25, 26-24 and UC San Diego downed Concordia 18-25, 29-27, 25-23, 25-22.
MIVA: Grand Canyon, Quincy win
Grand Canyon beat Fort Wayne 25-19, 25-16, 25-17 to improve to 13-8, 9-5, while the Mastodons dropped to 5-16, 2-7. Also Quincy improved to 5-14 by sweeping Belmont Abbey of the ConfCarolinas 25-11, 27-25, 25-23.
EIVA: NJIT beats Charleston
The 25-15, 25-17, 25-23 sweep left NJIT 11-7, 5-3, while Charleston remained winless in the league at 10-11, 0-8. Raymond Kowalski led with 12 kills and hit .346.
Conference Carolinas: Mount Olive wins again
Mount Olive forged into a tie for first with King at 10-1 with its four-set win over Emmanuel.
Barton kept pace and improved to 11-2 by sweeping Erskine.
Also, Limestone lost in five in a non-conference match to Lincoln Memorial and Pfeiffer fell to Southern Virginia.
Beach: USC rolls on but Claes/Hughes get a scare
In Hawai’i, No. 1 USC extended its win streak to 38 with a 5-0 sweep of Nebraska and a 4-1 victory over Utah. That includes two wins for the pair of Kelly Claes and Sara Hughes, who got all they could handle from Utah’s Adora Anae and Dani Barton 12-21, 22-20, 15-7. The first set snapped a streak of 105 wins for Claes and Hughes, who nonetheless won their 81st match in a row. It was also the 100th all-time victory by the pair to set a USC and Pac-12 (and presumably NCAA) record.
Saturday, USC plays No. 7 Arizona and then No. 4 Florida State for the second time in three days before finishing up against No. 4 Hawai’i.
Speaking of which, Hawai’i also swept Nebraska but then lost to FSU 3-2.
No. 2 Pepperdine beat host No. 6 Long Beach State 3-2. Both teams swept Loyola Marymount.
No. 3 UCLA had three sweeps Friday, beating Portland, San Jose State and San Francisco at the Monterey Invitational.
Action Saturday includes LSU as the host for the Tiger Beach Challenge that has No. 8 LSU, No. 10 South Carolina, Florida International, Tulane and North Florida.
