Match Stats
- #3 Long Beach State 49ers def. Cal Baptist Lancers 3-1 (25-18, 25-14, 19-25, 25-18)
- LBSU moves to 4-1 (1-1 MPSF); Cal Baptist falls to 2-3 (1-1 MPSF)
- Galen Center, Riverside, California
- Attendance: 435
- Match Stats
The 3rd-ranked Long Beach State 49ers stumbled in the 3rd set, but recovered to beat the Cal Baptist Lancers 3-1 on Friday for their first MPSF conference win of the season.
In the 3 sets that they won, LBSU had just 7 errors and hit .511; conversely, in the set that they lost, they had 10 errors and hit -.029.
“I thought the best part of the match was the response with good energy and emotion,” Knipe explained. “That and getting back to the way we trained and the way we play most of our matches. After that: execution.
After the struggle in that 3rd set, though, they bounced back to hit .684, and commit just a single error, in the 4th, thanks in part to some energy off the bench from Scott Stephanoff. The junior opposite played only one set, the 4th, but in that frame he recorded 3 kills on 4 swings – including the game-winning 25th point.
“In set four, we played a really nice, clean set,” Knipe said. “We passed the ball really well and got a lot of good production out of our middles. We got Scotty (Stephanoff) off the bench and he gave us a little spark in the fourth set. But I thought our service pressure was really good tonight.”
TJ DeFalco led scoring for LBSU with 12 kills and a .579 hitting percentage. He was the only player for either team with double digit kills.
While the 49ers’ offense had some inconsistencies, their defense played well all day out-blocking Cal Baptist 12.5-8 and holding their opponents to a .122 hitting percentage. Cal Baptist had four players with 7 kills each, topped by identical stat-lines from Rohit Paul and Logan Czyzewski (7 kills, 3 errors, 17 total attacks, .235 percentage).
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