Long Beach State University (LBSU) became a volleyball battleground Tuesday night, as the Walter Pyramid hosted the 2024 National Collegiate Athletics Association Men’s Volleyball Championship tournament.
Top schools from around the country are competing for the title, with the championship round taking place this Saturday.
LBSU advanced to the semifinals of the tournament after beating Belmont Abbey College 3-0 in the quarterfinals match Tuesday night. Head coach Alan Knipe and the No. 2 seeded Beach showed why they were ranked overall first in the nation by the National Volleyball Coaches Association and defended their home against the No. 7 Crusaders with excellently timed spikes and an all-around dominant performance.
The first 10 serves of the match were contentious, with the Beach and Crusaders tied 5-5 in the first set. Belmont Abbey soon let the floodgates open and the Beach took the reins, taking the first set 25-18. They went on to win set two 25-14 and set three 25-11.
Junior Sotiris Siapanis led the Beach in scoring with 11 points, or kills, while senior Nathan Harlan and sophomore Skyler Varga trailed closely with 10 kills apiece, and Varga aced two of his serves for easy points.
Freshman Zach Puentes of Belmont Abbey led his team as the only double digit scorer with 11 kills. Senior Simon Torwie of LBSU made use of his 6’ 10” height and led his team in blocking with 2 block assists, while senior Mason Briggs’s defensive agility resulted in 9 digs.
Aside from a rambunctious student section filled with shark costumes and yellow LBSU apparel, the Long Beach crowd showed up to the Pyramid with deafening cheers, drowning out the several rows of seats filled with Belmont Abbey fans from North Carolina.
Following its victory in the first round of the tournament, LBSU will face No. 3 Grand Canyon University (GCU) in the semifinals on Thursday. GCU handled its match against No. 6 Ohio State University with similar poise, winning 3-0 in their matchup. Both teams will go into Thursday’s match having not lost a set in the tournament.
As of April 22, Long Beach is ranked first in the nation by the American Volleyball Coaches Association, and GCU ranked third.
LBSU is looking to win its first championship since its back-to-back run in 2018 and 2019. The last time the Beach made it to the finals of the tournament in 2022, they lost 0-3 to the University of Hawai’i.
Other teams that survived the first day of tournament play include defending champions and No. 1 seed University of California Los Angeles, which defeated Mountain Valley State University 3-0. University of California Irvine also swept Pennsylvania State University 3-0.
The winner of LBSU vs. GCU will go on to play the winner of UCLA vs. UCI in the championship match on Saturday.
Long Beach’s semifinal match against GCU will take place Thursday in the Walter Pyramid at 3:30 p.m. Tickets for the semifinals are available on the LBSU Athletics site starting at $28 per seat. If seats are sold out, standing room tickets will be sold at the door starting Thursday at 3 p.m.
The championship match will take place Saturday, May 4 at 2 p.m. Tickets for the championship match will go on sale May 3 at 10:00 a.m. on the same ticketing site.
