BEACH NUMBERS ARE JUST THE BERRIES—TWIN TITLES AWAIT THIS WEEKEND IN BWC, MPSF
The 49ers of softball, women’s tennis and men’s volleyball position themselves for playoff spots, while the Dirtbags look to play spoiler.

If you number-crunch the schedule of all the sporting outfits in your blueberry, Blackberry, Halle-Berry, or razz-berry you know that statistically when the season ends the best you can hope for is break-even or a bit better. Tennis, softball and volleyball have met that standard but the Dirtbags may have to consider a new nickname: the Spoilers.

We will get to the baseball movie later, but the celebratory champagne this weekend is being stored in very different locations, the urban milieu of Los Angeles with the volleyball hardware and the wide open (and usually warm spaces) of Indian Wells for the tennis trophies.

The roller coaster riding men’s volleyball team got to this weekend losing eight of their last 14 matches. So go on the road to proud and powerful Stanford and—yep—beat the Cardinal in five 26-24, 25-27, 25-23, 19-25, 15-13. Now forgive me if I don’t know if the referees are up, down or wear stripes (actually they have a blue corporate sponsored polo these days) but the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Tournament flew head official Larry Schwartz up from Riverside. Third-ranked Stanford pumped the crowd up to over a thousand and the defending NCAA champs (they swept Penn State last year) had their eyes on the prize again.

Oddly, the same story might have been written about the Cinderella Gauchos, who swept three-time NCAA champion BYU in Provo—lowly regarded opponent wins on the road. So who wins this one? LBSU improved to 15-13 on the year but a hunk of those 13 losses were when the mad scientist of the MPSF, ‘Niner coach Andy Read, was experimenting with his lineup. That would explain why the cocktail of kills he stirred up included some of the less famous 49er names. Josh Riley with a season-high 21 kills and 13 digs, freshman Taylor Crabb 19 kills and 12 digs, spot starter Kyle Friend had 17 kills and 12 digs. The digging and passing heroes were Kirk Francis (14 digs) and freshman Connor Olbright (a .243 hitting percentage with a career-high 62 assists).

The tennis title as usual goes through the black and gold of the Beach. This time, Riverside and Fullerton play in on Thursday to be the first victim of the ‘Niner Swing Machine. After that it gets tough in the semis and finals, with the usual pretenders hoping to repeat the 2010 history when Irvine upset the Beach in the final and captured the lone Big West NCAA bid. This year the home girls have added powerful Klaudia Malenovska (Bratislava, Slovakia) who is virtually untouchable in singles and doubles. I think that there are no upsets this weekend.

NOTES ON THE NAPKIN-REDUX—We’ve Dusted on a pan full of these items already this spring and not much has changed. Baseball is hovering around .500 with a visit from Cal Poly this weekend, then travel to face the big bullies from CSUF, ASU and UCI. It is still training day for Buck’s ‘Niner newcomers so I think there are no upsets here either.

Ditto our note for softball, where we figured the favorable schedule (UCSB and CSUF coming in) and pitching depth (2.01 ERA) will get the Beach into the postseason, either by winning the Big West title or via their outstanding RPI (27). The other secret weapon LBSU has is Cindy Masner—no, not their former catcher Cindy Masner—but their senior women’s administrator who frequents the NCAA selection committee.

Closing with the calendar—Wednesday starts the first of three power lunches for big buck donors with Athletics Director Vic Cegles. VC promises to reveal the favored capital projects that have arisen from the new fee and (hopefully) the coaches’ own wish lists.

Saturday is the memorial service for former President Steve Horn who had tenure during the sometimes turbulent athletic times. Finally, the LBSU men’s volleyball team will hold its end of the season banquet on Monday at The Grand Event Center. Registration at 6:00pm; program and dinner at 6:30 pm. Cost for the banquet is $40 per person. LBSU fans can also sponsor a player for $30.