2:15pm | In my professor life for public policy before Y2K, we sometimes used a book titled, “How to Lie with Statistics.”  When I read the so called athletic experts debate over who is the best, the use of formulas like the RPI  gives me flashbacks to the dark days of disputed numerology, aka stats.
 
This topic arose when supporters of various sports in the athletic cafeteria line of Long Beach State want to know who has the bragging rights.  One passionate fan has developed his own system by creating a national rank by looking at the total number of teams that play in that sport, their record, and what their “true RPI” might be.

As you might guess the basketball teams have the most competitors for national ranking.  Women’s tennis was seen as having the best percentage score, ranked 36th out of 323 teams at 88.9%.  The LB men in this stat sheet shakeout are paced by baseball that came in at 78.3% in their field of 300 competitors.  The cash cow of men’s hoops fights for a post season bid with 345 teams and pulled a 73.6% and sadly ladies hoops, in a population of 343 opponents, placed last in the 16 sport 49er  entry list (12 percentile nationally.)   Like your Halloween candy, “Use caution when swallowing stats from unknown sources.”

Back to action and away from arithmetic for a while, it was a great weekend for the big time teams in Beach soccer and volleyball.

For soccer it was finally ending their scoring drought at 200 plus minutes when Senior Nicole Sweetman scored tin the 75th minute for a 1-0 victory over UC Riverside. And,  in the succinct words of their Coach Mauricio Ingrassia, “three points”  Enough to move LBSU into third place in the conference standing, and close behind leaders UC Irvine (13 points) and Cal State Northridge (13 points).   The key to the match was Freshman Taylor Nelson who her coach said was treating the soccer ball like a “hot potato”, you know touching it one time per run.  This time she did a great dribble drive (her fourth assist) and the long dark losing streak was all over.

The other top player was senior goalkeeper Kaitlyn Gustaves who earned her sixth shutout of the season. Gustaves is now tied for fourth in shutouts and ranks fifth in goals against average (0.93) in the 49er single-season record books.  Long Beach State returns to action this weekend as it closes out the regular season against UC Davis Friday and Pacific on Sunday.   Insiders expect the Beach to host one of the BWC semi final matches.

Volleyball is on a similar stretch run but with no conference tournament.  After a battle with Cal Poly, went five sets again, Long Beach had to turn around in one day and got payback on UC Santa Barbara 22-25, 25-18, 25-19, 25-22 to improve to 8-2 in the conference.  That work set up the Beach with a two-game lead in the standings.

Haleigh Hampton led the way for the 49ers with 19 kills and four blocks. Freshman Alma Serna had a career high with six solo blocks, and also made eight kills on .368 hitting. Defensively, senior Lauren Minkel had a tremendous night, making a season-high 27 digs to lead the 49ers, who finished with 75 digs and held the Gauchos to .174 hitting. Long Beach State hit .215, as Erin Juley also finished with a double-double, making 50 assists and 12 digs.

With five digs over the first two sets, senior Caitlin Ledoux also claimed another milestone, joining Tara Cross and Antoinette White as the only 49ers to record both 1,000 career digs and 1,000 career kills. Ledoux finished the night with her fifth double-double of the year, making 15 kills and 10 digs on the night.

The queens of spike are back in town and will host two matches this weekend, playing upstarts UC Riverside (Friday) and CS Northridge Saturday night.  Don’t tell UCR we called them upstarts since I vaguely recall losing to them last month in the Inland Empire.

NAME DROPPING DUST — Men’s volleyball has been friend and fund raising this fall but the new talent is looking very promising.  Certainly the old talent has been good.  Niner alum Matt Prosser and partner Matt Olson shocked the tournament favorites, John Hyden and Sean Scott, in the men’s AVP final (23-25, 27-25, 15-13).

Andy Read reports, “Not only was this Prosser and Olson’s first tournament together, it came after less than a month of practice time. Prosser’s regular partner, John Mayer, injured himself a few weeks ago, leading to Olson getting the call. Turns out it was the right one.
 
For Olson, it’s just the second title of his career, the first coming in 2008 at the AVP Belmar Open with Kevin Wong. As for Prosser, this marks the first title of his career.
 
Cleaning up an earlier note—6-9 Rwandan recruit Gatete Djuma is going to redshirt this year because his transcripts are still to be sorted out.  He will be part of the team next year and will just work on academics in 2011-12.

We close with our pal Misty May.  One of our faithful readers posed three questions to me and I just asked her to answer them!
 

Is she keeping up her fitness regimen? I have been keeping up with my fitness but not to the same degree that I will be when I get back to California. Right now I am having fun taking spin class, Zumba, running, and doing the Nike Training Club.
 
Does she get together with Rangers wives? I see a lot of the other wives at the games but outside the stadium we kind of go our own ways. I am sure some of them are close. I like them all though and enjoy seeing them.
 
How is Kerri and when do they start intense training for the 2012 Olympics? Kerri had shoulder surgery in the middle of Sept but is doing very well. We won’t start training till mid January or so. Our schedule has yet to be determined.
 
What’s going on with your academic life?  I will be down to my last Masters class at the end of this month. By Middle of Feb I will be done with all of my classes towards my Masters in Coaching and Athletic Administration.

 
That’s it and remember Misty and I both want you to Dream in Gold!!  And patronize our sponsors. — DR. DAN