NOTES ON MY NAPKIN: LBSU WEEKEND REVIEW AND A PEEK AHEAD

The scoreboard is where fans look for the result of an athletic contest, but part of the fun and fascination for Forty-Niner faithful is the “game within the game” and our weekend in review proves the point.

For the purists, the results were volleyball 2-0 with wins over Pacific (3-1) and Davis (3-2), women’s basketball downed by Cal Poly Pomona (58-39) and men’s water polo drowned by Cal (14-7) and Stanford (11-6).  Oh yes, the queen in goal for the ‘Niner Soccer, Emily Kingsborough, shut out Irvine 1-0 to win Long Beach State’s first-ever conference title and earn a trip to the NCAA Tournament. She won the MVP for the players but her coach Mauricio Ingrassia (who trains his charges in the early morning mist) got needled by CSUN coach Keith West when the Thursday temps touched 100.  Sunday, the weather never got to 70. Watch for our special story on the NCAA soccer action this weekend with the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament slated for Friday and Sunday at campus sites.

The chess moves in women’s volleyball involved Beach boss Brian Gimmillaro, who talked his kids into ignoring the Tigers’ three-match Stockton win streak over Long Beach and enjoyed the town that time forgot in a 3-1 victory. The stars, as they have been of late, were Sophomore Janisa Johnson (16 kills and 21 digs) and Caitlin Ledoux (15 kills and 13 digs). With Fullerton winning themselves, the Beach moved to that great Vet School Davis where the Aggies started to look like Zenyatta closing the gap before Brian’s Beach girls took the “Blame” for the win. A new jockey went to the whip for the ‘Niners when libero Lauren Minkel collected 29 digs for Long Beach State and splashed the ups that has made her a legend of Hawaii’s Iolani Raiders. With the saving in Lauren’s hands, the killing fields were populated as usual by Caitlin Ledoux (23 kills ), Haleigh Hampton and Janisa Johnson (13 kills each) and Delainey Aigner-Swesey offering her career high with nine kills on .444 hitting.

BOX OFFICE DUST – A lot of chatter about the cash cache of soccer and even some talk about trying to build a facility and add a men’s team. This season the LB ladies drew 460 for their semi-final and had a season high of 587 for UCSB, which isn’t bad for the West Coast. Yesterday’s ladies title game at UCI drew 754 but the ‘Eaters men’s team (7th ranked) pulled in just 318 last Wednesday.

Calendaring, we have a busy week ahead with volleyball trying to keep the beat going with Thursday and Friday night fights with CSUN then Riverside. The Saturday homecoming party starts at noon in the parking lot, then moves inside the Pyramid at 4:00pm where the Top 25 San Diego State Aztecs await. 

So how good is SDSU? The Aztecs has been picked to win the Mountain West ahead of Brigham Young, UNLV and New Mexico plus they are the only school to have two players named to the conference’s first team, forwards Kawhi Leonard and Malcolm Thomas. SDSU won 25 last season and advanced to the NCAA Tournament. The Aztecs’ preseason ranking marks the first time the program has been ranked in any of the two major polls (AP, Coaches) in school history. Their next stop on the all-Monson memory tour is at Gonzaga on Tuesday, then a weekend tourney at Miami, Ohio. Last year, SDSU lost it’s first road game at Saint Mary’s, so who knows.

My whiskey tango foxtrot moment this week (translated as the acerbic abbreviated twitter talk: WTF) goes to UCI coach Paula Weishoff who bailed on her team on October 22nd for service as the second assistant to the U.S. Women’s National Team at the FIVB World Championship. She will be stay overseas until the ‘Eaters play LBSU on the 18th.

Lest you think all the athletes on campus are bronzed and buffed, take a peek at the pencil-necked geeks from biology, engineering, math etc. who will take on my old college, the powerful Health and Human Services, in a halftime shootout on December 2. KPE stud Barry Lavay is the HHS captain for life.  The real basketball game has a fan friendly 7:00pm tip off against BYU-Hawaii (much preferred over BYU-Provo) and the four-person faculty teams put down their red pens in favor of bad hair and uniforms for the right to a lot of Chicken.