LBSU vs. LaVerne

[vballmom]

www.longbeachstate.com/vol/mvol/REL03/relmvol010303.html

Long Beach State Wins Season Opener, 3-1
Sliti and Wootton Record 23 Kills Each to Lead Beach

LONG BEACH, CA – The Long Beach State men’s volleyball team opened its 2003 season with a 3-1 victory over the University of LaVerne (0-1), Friday night at The Pyramid. Game score were 30-23, 28-30, 30-17, 31-29.

Sophomore Yassir Sliti recorded a career-best 23 kills with a .349 hitting percentage. Junior Jeff Wootton also posted 23 kills, tying his career-high, in the LBSU victory. Freshman Tyler Hildebrand registered 51 assists in his Long Beach State debut. Brad Evans led LaVerne with 16 kills and 8 digs, while Matt Cornell had 9 kills.

Sliti paced The Beach with seven kills in the first frame. Junior Jeff Wootton tallied four kills in the frame for a .444 hitting percentage. As a team, LBSU racked up 16 kills (16-8-34), while defensively limiting the Leopards to a .000 attack percentage (8-8-25). Hildebrand set up the Long Beach offense with 13 assists. Evans led LaVerne with five kills in the frame.

LaVerne rallied in the second frame behind Evans, who again posted five of ULV’s 12 kills to give LaVerne the 30-28 victory. Sliti and Wootton continued to lead Long Beach State, registering four and six kills respectively. Junior Scott Touzinsky picked up where he left off last season, netting three service aces in the frame. Last year Touzinsky recorded 43 aces.

The Beach turned up the heat in the third behind Sliti, who registered 10 kills to raise his match total to 21. Wootton chipped in with six kills, while Touzinsky added two more aces. As a team, LBSU registered 23 kills for a .583 attack percentage (23-2-36). Touzinsky finished the night with 10 kills, 5 aces, 6 digs and 5 blocks.

The 49ers closed out the Leopards 31-29 in the fourth and final frame.

Long Beach State resumes play on January 8 versus Cal Baptist at The Pyramid at 7:30 p.m.

[Vballkid]

I didn't go to the game last night.. but, how does LBSU lose one game to a Div. III team? Any Beach fans concerned?

[the future]

ASk USC who lost to Springfield 1-3last month. Do not underestimate teams like Laverne, Juniata, Springfield, Pierce, and Arizona. Often times they are overlooked athletes who become very good volleyball players.....Heart and emotion are an x factor that are often not considered.

Yes sometimes DI schools do not get as psyched for these matches...I Know...but it is a lesson to be learned.

[NET]

D-III Springfield College beat USC in a match & took one game from Penn State but lost the match in a November pre-season tourney in western NY. The top D-III teams have enough talent to steal a game or 2 from some D-I teams, especially if the big boys don't focus because they are playing a team with no scholarship players.

[VB Dog]

LaVerne is not just any team, they are a very good team. They have proven over the years that the level of the division in which they play has no relavance to how they play. They won the DIII championship two years ago and were runners up last year. They would be and are obviously competitive against D-1. In fact I'd like to see them move up. They've impressed me over the years. Also, Cal Baptist is a surprisingly good team every year.

This is LaVerne's schedule. They play just about as many D-1 teams as D-III. Since there are only 21 D-1 programs there is a lot of talent spread around in the lower ranks.

www.ulv.edu/sports/

2002-2003 Men's Volleyball Schedule
Date Opponent Location Outcome
Fri Jan 3,2003
07:00 PM Long Beach State Long Beach L 1-3
Sun Jan 5,2003
12:00 PM Pepperdine Malibu
Mon Jan 6,2003
05:00 PM Arizona
Tue Jan 7,2003
07:00 PM Cal State Northridge
Fri Jan 10,2003
UCSC, Stevens Tech, Hope
Tue Jan 14,2003
07:00 PM Pepperdine University Malibu
Fri Jan 24,2003
07:00 PM University of the Pacific Stockton
Mon Jan 27,2003
07:00 PM Princeton University
Tue Feb 4,2003
07:00 PM University of Southern Ca
Tue Feb 18,2003
07:00 PM Cal Baptist University
Wed Feb 26,2003
07:00 PM UCLA Los Angeles
Sun Mar 2,2003
07:00 PM University of Findlay
Tue Mar 4,2003
07:00 PM Clarke College
Mon Mar 10,2003
07:00 PM Concordia University
Fri Mar 14,2003
07:00 PM Newman University
Sun Mar 16,2003
07:00 PM SUNY New Paltz
Tue Mar 18,2003
07:00 PM Rutgers University
Fri Mar 21,2003
07:00 PM UCSC, NYU, SUNY New Paltz Santa Cruz
Sat Mar 22,2003
07:00 PM UCSC, NYU, SUNY New Paltz Santa Cruz
Tue Mar 25,2003
07:00 PM UC Santa Barbara
Fri Mar 28,2003
UCSC, Harvard,E Mennonite
Sat Mar 29,2003
UCSC,Harvard, E.Mennonite
Mon Mar 31,2003
07:00 PM UC San Diego
Fri Apr 4,2003
07:00 PM Cal State Northridge
Sat Apr 5,2003
07:00 PM Cal Baptist University Riverside

[Surfin D Beach]

I came away pretty impressed at the moments when we really turned it on... Wooton absolutely destroys the ball... Yassir gets up there... the setters need to calm down a bit, but they have a bright future

LaVerne is a pretty competititve team - very scrappy and they block well considering their situation...

Anyhow, here's the PT article...

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OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS SECTION
1/4/2003
- 49ers hoping to wipe the slate clean
- Another rough night for 49ers
- Can 49ers find way home?
- Prolonged losing skid a new experience
- 49ers' woes continue vs. Portland
- 49ers notes: Pain too much for Williams
- 49ers hope to put slow start behind them



49ers stop La Verne to start season
College volleyball: Men's team needs four games to win opener.
By Gordon Verrell, Staff writer
There were times in Long Beach State's season-opening men's volleyball match Friday night at the Pyramid when the 49ers were thoroughly dominating.

Ah, but there were also other times.

"Keeping our focus, we weren't great at that,' 49ers coach Alan Knipe said after a 3-1 nonconference win over the University of La Verne.

"This match,' he said, "was pretty symbolic of where we are right now.'

Where the 49ers are immediately is 1-0, which is better than last year, when they dropped their first three matches and finished 13-18, their first losing season in eight years.

Where they hope to be ... well, as junior co-captain Jeff Wootton put it, "We expect to do well. At times we showed what it will take.'

The 49ers won the first and third games easily enough, 30-23 and 30-17. But La Verne (0-1), a Division III school, won the second, 30-28, and was even in Game 4, 29-29, before Wootton and Scott Touzinsky banged home the final two points for a 31-29 win.

"That's a scrappy team,' Knipe said of the Leopards. "They were in the Division III (national) finals last year, and they won it the year before.'

Selling that to the 49ers was Knipe's biggest hurdle.

"We have to get better at keeping our focus no matter the circumstance,' he said. "We got up 10 or so points, and guys kind of backed off. We can't do that. This is such a mental game.'

Wootton and Yassir Sliti each had 23 kills to lead the 49ers. For Wootton it matched his career high. For Sliti, who played sparingly last year, he had his career high in the first game when he knocked down seven kills, and he topped his season total for last year (10) by the second game.

"He's very gifted, very athletic, very tall,' Knipe said of the 6-foot-6 Sliti, a sophomore from London, who was born in Morocco. "He did a nice job.'

He also kept Matt Meine, the 49ers' fifth-leading hitter last year, on the bench.

"We're looking at a lot of different lineups,' Knipe said. "Matt's a very good player. He's going to play a lot. It's going to take more than six guys.'

The 49ers out-hit La Verne, .345 to .177, but were out-blocked, 14.5 to 11.

Touzinsky, who had 10 kills and was in on five block assists, also registered five of the 49ers' aces.

But, the 49ers were guilty of 24 service errors, twice as many as La Verne.

"I can handle the service errors,' Knipe said, "but I don't like it when they come in bunches ... three out of five, four out of six. That puts you in a tough situation.'

The 49ers were in a tough enough situation in the fourth game, when La Verne jumped out to a 4-1 lead in hopes of tying the match. The Leopards built the lead to 10-5, and were still ahead at 20-16.

The 49ers then reeled off six points in a row to go in front, 22-20. The 49ers didn't trail after that, but the score was tied four times, at 26, 27, 28 and 29.

Wootton had seven of his kills in the fourth game, and Touzinsky had four.

"It was the first (match), you expect ups and downs,' said Wootton. "It was good to get the first one out of the way.

"At times we played great, and at times we weren't very aggressive.'

Brad Evans, a 6-3 senior, led La Verne with 16 kills.
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GO BEACH!!!

[some guy]

Didn't Long Beach lose in 3 to them last year? Or was that SC?

The only reason LaVerne gets close to D.1 teams is because they don't take them seriously. They are no where near the same level.

[vballmom]

They lost to them in 5 last year.