Clemson has a new women’s coach.
The No. 3 BYU men beat visiting No. 1 Long Beach State in five to take over the top spot in the MSPF. Both teams scored exactly the same number of points in the 20-25, 26-24, 25-20, 21-25, 17-15 thriller.
And in NCAA beach, No. 9 South Carolina is the host Saturday for tournament that includes No. 1 USC, No. 4 Florida State, No. 9 Georgia State and No. 13 Stetson. Also, TCU is the host for No. 7 Arizona, No. 8 LSU and No. 11 Arizona State.
First the rest of Saturday’s men’s Division I-II slate.
In the MPSF, fans in Provo get treated to the BYU-Long Beach State rematch. No. 5 UC Irvine goes to No. 8 Pepperdine and No. 14 CSUN, which lost there Friday, plays at No. 4 Hawai’i.
In the MIVA, No. 11 Ball State goes to No. 2 Ohio State, Quincy plays at Lindenwood and Fort Wayne goes to McKendree.
There are two non-conference matches as No. 10 Loyola plays host to No. 13 Penn State of the EIVA, No. 7 Lewis entertains Saint Francis of the EIVA as the visiting teams trade places and try to bounce back from Friday losses.
There is one other match in the EIVA as Charleston goes to George Mason.
And in Conference Carolinas, there are four league matches as Mount Olive goes to Limestone, King plays host to Erskine, Barton goes to Pfeiffer and Emmanuel is at Lees-McRae.
Clemson hires Iowa’s Franklin: The ACC school filled the vacancy with Michaela Franklin, who has been the associate head coach at Iowa since 2014. The former Kansas State player has also been an assistant at Marquette, Wisconsin-Green Bay and Northern Illinois. She has never been a head coach and becomes one of the very few African-American women to lead a Division I program.
Clemson, 6-26 last year, fired coach Hugh Hernesman earlier this month.
BYU wins in five: The BYU website called it an upset, but it’s not like the home-standing Cougars were big underdogs as they improved to 21-2 and took away the top spot in the MPSF at 14-1. Long Beach State, which saw its 14-match winning streak end, is 21-3, 14-2, and still holds a two-game lead over third-place Hawai’i in the loss column.
BYU, which was tied eight times in the fifth set, was led by Jake Langlois, whose kill ended the match. He had 20 kills overall, hit .341, had 10 digs and two blocks. Brenden Sander had 13 kills and like Langlois four of his team’s 20 service errors, five digs and six blocks. Tim Dobbert had 12 kills, 16 digs and five blocks. And Price Jarman had nine kills and hit .750 and had four blocks.
“I thought we got a little too carried away by every move and every fake,” BYU coach Shawn Olmstead said. “We reminded the guys of the game plan. Once we started doing that, we were getting good touches. I’m proud of the way we competed through all five sets.”
Long Beach got 23 kills from TJ DeFalco, who hit .340. He also had 14 digs and three blocks. Kyle Ensing had nine kills and six blocks but hit .051. Amir Lugo-Rodriguez, Bryce Yould and Andrew Whitt had eight kills apiece. Lugo-Rodriguez hit .727 but had five of his team’s 28 service errors and one of its five aces. Ensing had 10 digs and six blocks.
Hawai’i, USC, Cal Baptist win: The only other MPSF match of the night had Hawai’i beating visiting CSUN 25-18, 25-23, 26-24. It left the Rainbow Warriors 21-4, 11-4 , while CSUN dropped to 12-13, 5-11.
Hawai’i, which won at home for the 20th time in a row, got 13 kills from Stijn van Tilburg, who hit .500. Kupono Fey added 10 kills.
Arvis Greene had 17 kills and hit .344 to lead CSUN. Dimitar Kalchev had 12 kills.
No. 12 USC won a non-conference match over visiting Concordia 25-22, 25-23, 25-19.
Gianluca Grasso had 20 kills while hitting .455 and he added eight digs as USC won its season-best fifth consecutive match to improve to 11-12, while Concordia fell to 17-10.
Lucas Lossone added 14 kills and hit .500 for the Trojans, while Matt Douglas had nine digs.
Concordia’s Jonathon Predney had 11 kills and nine digs.
And Cal Bapist continued its eastern swing with a 25-22, 25-20, 29-27 win at Belmont Abbey of the Conference Carolinas.
Lewis, Loyola beat EIVA visitors: Lewis had to go five to get past Penn State 21-25, 23-25, 25-20, 25-20, 15-11. Lewis is 18-6, while Penn State is 13-8.
Freshman Ryan Coenen led Lewis with 16 kills, hit .389 and had six blocks. Mitch Perinar and Jacob Schmiegelt had nine kills each and Schmiegelt had six blocks.
Mitch Nugent had 15 kills and Aiden Albrecht 14 for Penn State.
Loyola went the distance and then some to win the first set and then took care of visiting Saint Francis 32-30, 25-19, 25-20. It left Loyola 13-8, while SFU is 9-13.
Ben Plaisted led Loyola with 11 kills and seven digs. Jeff Hogan had 13 kills for Saint Francis.
Also in matches involving MIVA teams, Grand Canyon beat visiting Princeton in four, while Quincy lost at Missouri Baptist in four. Grand Canyon, 15-9, got 17 kills from Cody Williams, who hit .538, and 16 from Cullen Mosher, who hit .480. Their team hit .411. Princeton, which dropped to 10-10, got nine kills from Parker Dixon and eight each from George Huhmann and Greg Luck. Dixon and Luck had five service errors each as their team had 23 overall and three aces. Grand Canyon had three aces and 17 errors, four by Williams, meaning the teams combined for six aces and 40 errors.
Harvard sweeps Sacred Heart, Mason wins: In the only league match of the night, Harvard won 25-23, 25-12, 25-21 as the Crimson improved to 7-10 overall, 4-4 in the EIVA. Sacred Heart is 12-7, 5-3.
Harvard got seven kills each from Casey White and Erik Johnsson. Sacred Heart’s Christopher DeLucie had 13 kills and hit .450. He had seven digs and three blocks, one solo.
Mason held off Conference Carolinas’ Barton 25-12, 25-21, 21-25, 21-25, 17-15. Mason is 9-11, while Barton, which rallied from being down 20-18 in the third, dropped to 14-5.
“We just need to put our foot down when teams are 2-0 down against us,” Mason coach Jay Hosack said after his team wasted a two-set lead for the fourth time this season.
Kyle Barnes led Mason with 13 kills and hit. 360. He had seven digs and three blocks. Jack Wilson added 10 kills, four blocks and six digs.
Angelos Mandilaris and Vasilis Mandilaris had 15 kills each for Barton and Aleksa Brkovic added 13 kills and 10 digs.
ConfCarolinas: Mount Olive swept North Greenville, King went four to beat Emmanuel and Lees-McRae swept Erskine. It’s a three-team race as Mount Olive leads the league at 15-6, 13-1, while King is a half a game back at 23-2, 12-1 and Barton is right behind at 14-5, 12-2.
