MVB- Hawaii 5

MVB- Hawaii 5UPDATES 5:44PM | Long Beach State will face Stephen F. Austin in an ESPN BracketBuster game on Friday, Feb. 22 in the Walter Pyramid. The game will be televised live on ESPNU at 6:00PM (PT).

Stephen F. Austin plays in the Southland Conference and are 18-2 (9-1 SLC). In last week’s Mid-Major Poll (1/28), the Lumberjacks were ranked 12th overall. The team’s only losses came to conference member Northwestern State(57-61) and SEC member Texas A&M (54-62).

This will be the last year for the BracketBuster games.

ORIGINAL 9:41AM | The second level of the Pyramid is really for kingdoms—volleyball estates for both men and women, and basketball yards for both men and women.

The ruler of the women’s volleyball corner has the most hardware and fanciest décor. That would be the fashionable, smooth, calm, cool and collected Brian Gimmillaro. His team is officially in their off season mode but there is always spring practice, sand volleyball, recruiting and showing off his alums at every awards banquet around town.

The opposite side of the big blue square building has both of the basketball teams. As fortunate as the men of Monson (13-8, 9-1) have been in surviving some close calls (a pair of two point wins last weekend over UCSB and Cal Poly) the women of Wynn (11-10, 4-5) have stumbled losing five of their last seven.

That report then leaves arguable the hottest of the Pyramid tenants, Alan Knipe’s surging men’s volleyball team. Their week of work included two road wins; the first was a gritty 26-28, 25-21, 27-25, 25-23, mid week MPSF road win over No. 14 Cal Baptist. Nice but that was just a warm-up to the big show at BYU. That was where the best of the new Niner names, junior Dalton Ammerman, pounded down a career-high 21 kills and his team shocked No. 1 BYU, 25-23, 19-25, 25-18, 16-25, 15-10. Plus they did the deed in front of a hostile crowd of 3,368 Friday evening and on BYU TV. Whew. Dalton and the Niners were so good the typically homer-ish BYU TV announcers ran out of new names for the rising star and just called him “Hammer-man.”

The numbers don’t lie. Ammerman, who registered his first career 20-plus kill match, finished the night hitting .459 (21-4-37) and balanced an act that here to fore had been mostly Taylor Crabb (19 kills, seven digs and five blocks) and fine passing from. Junior Connor Olbright who directed the 49er offense to a .301 hitting percentage with 49 assists, and notched a team-high 10 digs for his third double-double of the season. The Beach deservedly gets a home stand, a four-match session starting with MVB royalty such as No. 4 Pepperdine on Wednesday and eighth-ranked USC on Friday.

Long Beach State returns to the friendly confines of the Walter Pyramid next week as it opens a four-match home stand with a 7PM showdown against No. 4 Pepperdine on Wednesday and eighth-ranked USC on Friday. In fact the spike and serve guys have ten of their next eleven games at home after a one match sprint up the 405 to CSUN.

PARALYSIS THROUGH ANALYSIS—so what to make of the frantic fandom of 49er men’s basketball. Mission one of course is to win the regular season Big West crown and be assured, at a minimum, of a post season bid at least of the NIT flavor. Three BWC tourney wins in three days and it is back to the NCAAs. Their road this week is tough– at Hawaii Thursday night at 9PM and then a red eye to the valley for a repeat battle with CSUN on Saturday in the so-called Matadome.

One of my insiders said the UCSB was “an ugly game. I refrained from posting my real thoughts/notes…The passing (passing to the wrong team!), ball handing and lack of boxing out was very tough to watch.”

My problems with the Beach Boys was for a home game not many assists; rebounds; bench scoring; Loose ball hustle and other notes on that theme. Sometimes getting away from the friendly confines puts some fire in the belly of your favorite beast.

Meanwhile, perhaps the more fragile ladies of the Beach will appreciate their home cooking where they also see Hawaii (Thursday night) and CSUN Saturday at 4PM Unlike the gents of the Mid, the only post season LBSU prayers for the ladies involve winning the BWC tourney. The regular season title is realistically out of reach.

Shutting down the napkin. The women of tennis have some frowns on their brow since they lost to LMU 4-3 last weekend and arch rival UCI swept the Lions. Different locales but worrisome.

Last add enhancing performance. My Miami writer pal Dan Le Batard and I agree on the irony that we spend a lot more time questioning the morality of athletes than we do the morality of the athletic culture or its rules. Case in point, we should worry more about activities that cause injury and less about remedies to fix injuries.

Finally some baseball news directly from the wise guys of the Big West Conference. They put out their 2013 Preseason Coaches Poll. The Titans earned nine first-place votes en route to a total of 99 points and was followed by UC Irvine, who collected the remaining first place vote and posted an overall 82 point total. Rounding out the top three with 75 points was, ta dah, Long Beach State.

The Titans return a very experienced squad from the 2012 season, including All-American Michael Lorenzen and Big West Freshman of the Year, Matt Chapman. UC Irvine welcomes back an impressive pitching staff led by Big West All-Conference First Teamer Andrew Thurman.

Your Dirtbags do have 19 letter winners coming back (with eight pitchers) and high hopes for four newcomers, including right-handers David Hill and Shane Carle. Cal Poly, who looks to continue where it left off last season, came in fourth, UCSB 5th, then Hawaii, UCR, CSUN, Davis and Pacific was picked last in the 10-team field. Mini Plans, box seats and other promo deals are offered from prices as low as $3 a ticket for groups. The theme this year is “Blood, Sweat & Dirt.”—DR. DAN  

Photo: Niners use Junior outside hitter Dalton Ammerman in Upset of #1 BYU. Photo by John Fajardo/LBSU Athletics