Two-time AVCA first-team All-American Skylar Varga of Long Beach State attacks against the block of two-time first-team All-America setter Tread Rosenthal of Hawaii during the NCAA semifinals Saturday night. (Photo courtesy Long Beach State athletics)
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It’ll be the Anteaters vs. the Rainbow Warriors, both of the Big West Conference, on Monday in the NCAA’s National Collegiate Men’s Championship title match.
The Anteaters of UC-Irvine, who finished third in the Big West this season at 5-5, improved to 21-8 with a 25-19, 23-25, 27-25, 25-19 victory over MIVA-champion Ball State on Saturday night at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion. The victory came two days after their upset of No. 1 UCLA.
Freshman Andrej Jokanovic led UCI with 18 kills, hitting .308 to go with three assists, six digs and three blocks, one solo. Trevor Clark, who leads the nation in hitting percentage, had 14 kills with one error in 18 attacks to hit .733 and added two digs and six blocks, one solo. Andreas Brink had 13 kills, hit .300, and had two assists, three blocks and seven digs, and D’arcy Williams had 12 kills, an assist, a block and a match-high 10 digs. Setter Cameron Kosty, the freshman son of Stanford coach John Kosty, had two kills, an ace, 53 assists and two blocks, one solo.
Ball State, which ended its season 26-5 after defeating Pepperdine in the quarterfinals, got 20 of its 53 kills from MIVA player of the year Patrick Rogers, who hit .304 and had two assists, an ace, a block and seven digs. Anteaters coach David Kniffin in his postmatch comments called Rogers, “the best outside hitter in the country.” Will Patterson added nine kills with one error in 15 attacks and eight blocks.
In the NCAA semifinals Saturday night, UC-Irvine’s Micah Goss (left) jousts with Lucas Machado of Ball State. (Photo courtesy of Jim Wolf )
While storied Pauley was pretty empty for the first semifinal, it filled up for the nightcap with an announced crowd of 9,409 as the Rainbow Warriors of Hawai’i (29-5) came away with a 25-15, 18-25, 25-21, 25-22 victory over Long Beach State (25-5), its third “W” over the Beach this season. UH won their regular-season meetings, but Long Beach won the Big West title match.
Hawai’i middle Justin Todd had 10 blocks, two solo, to go with four kills. Kristian Titriyski led the Rainbow Warriors with 14 kills, an assist, two aces, three blocks and a dig. Louis Sakanoko had 12 kills, hit .360 and had three assists, five digs and two blocks, one solo, and Adrien Roure had 10 kills, three blocks and three digs. All-American setter Tread Rosenthal required a injury timeout during the third set after appearing to hurt his hip or leg, but stayed in the game, although he moved gingerly. Rosenthal had two kills in seven errorless tries, 36 assists, two aces, five digs and five blocks, one solo. His team hit .337.
Long Beach, which hit .200 got 13 kills from Skyler Varga, who had two assists, an ace, three blocks and two digs. Wojciech Gajek added 11 kills but hit .071 to go with an ace, a block and four digs.
In his postmatch comments, Rainbow Warriors coach Charlie Wade lauded his program’s followers for showing up to a neutral-court match in such numbers: “The fan support we get is unlike anything anywhere else on the planet. We are fortunate that we live in a community where volleyball is a BIG DEAL. Men’s volleyball, women’s volleyball, beach volleyball. Volleyball has been such a big part of the community, not just in Honolulu and Oahu, we’re playing for an entire state when we get out there and compete. It’s a big deal to us and to all those fans who are coming, so we want to do everything we can to send them out with a win.”
In their regular-season meetings at Irvine, Hawai’i beat UCI in five on April 3 and swept the next day. The title match Monday at UCLA is at 7 p.m. Eastern/4 p.m. Pacific/1 p.m. Hawai’i on cable ESPN2.
Hawaii fans turned out in force for their team’s NCAA semifinal match against Long Beach State, which drew a crowd of 9,409 at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion. (Photo courtesy of Hawaii athletics)
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