{"id":241951,"date":"2026-03-29T09:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T09:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/241951\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T09:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T09:59:09","slug":"no-18-csun-falls-in-straight-sets-at-no-3-long-beach-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/241951\/","title":{"rendered":"No. 18 CSUN Falls in Straight Sets at No. 3 Long Beach State"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONG BEACH, Calif. – One night after dropping a five-set heartbreaker at home, 18th-ranked CSUN fell in straight sets on Saturday as No. 3 Long Beach State claimed a 25-21, 25-16, 25-14 Big West win at LBS Financial Credit Union Pyramid.<\/p>\n

Jalen Phillips<\/a> led the Matadors (12-8, 0-4 Big West) with nine kills, hitting .182 on 22 swings. Freshman Noah Douphner<\/a> came off the bench to put down six kills on 10 attacks to hit .500.\u00a0Setter Owen Douphner<\/a> dished out 25 assists to go with two digs and two blocks, but the Matadors were held to a .209 hitting percentage as a team and managed just 3.0 total blocks.<\/p>\n

The Matadors were competitive early but were ultimately undone by Long Beach State’s .561 hitting percentage on the night.<\/p>\n

CSUN stayed within striking distance in the opening set, using a 3-0 run, capped by a Phillips ace, to tie the score at 14. The\u00a0Beach would answer with five straight points to force a CSUN timeout at 19-14. The Matadors rallied back to within two at 22-20 following a Phillips kill, but the hosts used a late service run to take a 25-21 win. Phillips led the Matadors with seven\u00a0kills, providing much of the offense as CSUN hit .217 in the frame.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The second set proved decisive. A Malcolm King<\/a> kill kept CSUN even at 7-7 in the early going, but an ensuing 8-1 run by the Beach proved decisive. Trailing 18-10, the Matadors would only get within seven points the reminder of the set as the\u00a0Beach hit .737 in the frame and sided out at a 93% clip.<\/p>\n

In the third set, the Beach hit .647 to the Matadors’ .160 as Long Beach State built an early lead and never relinquished control.<\/p>\n

UP NEXT

\nCSUN will next open up a home-and-home series against No. 8 UC Santa Barbara. The Matadors travel to Goleta on Thursday (Apr. 2) at 7 p.m. before returning to Northridge on Saturday (Apr. 4) for a 6 p.m. first serve.<\/p>\n

#GoMatadors<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONG BEACH, Calif. – One night after dropping a five-set heartbreaker at home, 18th-ranked CSUN fell in straight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-241951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}