<\/p>\n
The 49ers looked better in just about every way in the second of two matches against BYU\u2026but they still fell in four sets, 26-30, 30-27, 22-30, 23-30. <\/span>“Well, we played volleyball tonight,” said head coach Andy Read. “I know we’re supposed to play volleyball every night, but, you know.” <\/span><\/p>\n Read’s squad reduced Thursday’s 18 service errors to 14, and got nine aces to Thursday’s zero. <\/span>They improved their hitting from .101 to .273, and they had five players notch double digit points (team-leading Kyle Friend, Tommy Pestolesi, Dean Bittner, Dan Alexander, and Antwain Aguillard). <\/span>They still struggled mightily to find their way around BYU’s block, and still couldn’t solve the duo of Robb Stowell and Andrew Steward; Stowell had 26 kills on .657 hitting, and Steward had seven block assists to go with 21 kills. The first set was a dead heat until the 24th point, with 15 tied scores and four lead changes. <\/span>But a 6-2 run to close it gave the Cougars the start they wanted, and Long Beach State’s second-set efforts (.351 hitting) fell to naught as they were shut down to close out the game. <\/span>And despite the improved commitment and effort, this team needs wins. <\/span>They currently sit in eight place at 8-10 in the MPSF, with four matches remaining. <\/span>Read says they need to win three of four to be relatively assured of a top-8 finish (and thus an appearance in the conference tournament), and they travel to face UC Irvine (6-11 in conference), then come home to play UCLA (9-8), USC (9-8) and Pepperdine (12-5). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 49ers looked better in just about every way in the second of two matches against BYU\u2026but they still fell in four sets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1575"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=1575"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}