<\/p>\n
Report by LBSU<\/span><\/p>\n 10:00 |<\/strong> 49ERS ON THE WEB: All of Long Beach State\u2019s home matches and a handful of its road matches will be broadcast live on the internet at longbeachstate.com. Shane Nolan handles play-by-play duties. LBSU LOOKS FOR TWO IN A ROW WHEN IT HOSTS UC SAN DIEGO FRIDAY: Long Beach State will look to put together its first back-to-back wins of the season when the 49ers host UC San Diego on Friday at the Walter Pyramid. The Beach is coming off an impressive 3-0 win over Pepperdine last Saturday in Malibu. LBSU will be playing at home for just the second time this season. The 49ers lost their home opener to Cal State Northridge on Jan. 15. Long Beach State has dominated the series with UC San Diego compiling a 49-4 all-time record against the Tritons. The 49ers have won the last four and 14 of the last 15 meetings between the two teams. BITTNER EARNS NATIONAL AND MPSF PLAYER OF THE WEEK HONORS: Dean Bittner has been named the Sports Imports\/AVCA Men\u2019s Division I-II National Player of the Week, as well as the MPSF Molten Co-Player of the Week, after leading the 49ers to a split of their matches last week. Bittner recorded back-to-back 20-kill outings, while only playing in six games. He started things off by notching 20 kills on .356 hitting with six digs, three blocks and an ace in the 49ers loss to top-ranked Southern California. He followed by hitting a blistering .833 \u2013 a career-high \u2013 while registering 20 kills, three digs, one block and one ace in LBSU\u2019s sweep of then-No. 7 Pepperdine. For the week, Bittner averaged 6.66 kills, 1.50 digs and hit an efficient .522. BITTNER\u2019S FOURTH CAREER NATIONAL P.O.W. HONOR IS TIED FOR THE MOST IN LBSU HISTORY: Dean Bittner\u2019s national player of the week honor was the fourth of his career, with two coming in 2008, one in 2009 and one this season. His four national honors are tied for the most in school history with David McKienzie who won two in 1999 and two in 2001. Tyler Hildebrand has three national weekly honors, while Tom Hoff, Duncan Budinger and Paul Lotman had two each. BITTNER\u2019S 30 KILLS IN OPENER MARKED FIFTH TIME IN CAREER SENIOR HAS HAD 30 OR MORE KILLS IN A MATCH: Despite Long Beach State\u2019s loss against California Baptist in this season\u2019s opener, senior Dean Bittner got off to an impressive start to the season with the fifth 30-kill match of his career. Bittner needs three more matches with 30 kills to tie Martin Wagner (94, 96) for the fifth most 30-kill matches in a career at Long Beach State. Bittner had four 30-kill matches last season, including a career-high 42 at BYU. BITTNER BECOMES JUST SEVENTH LBSU PLAYER TO RECORD 1,500 CAREER KILLS: Dean Bittner joined elite company at Long Beach State when he recorded his 1,500th career kill at Pepperdine on January 23. Bittner joined Brent Hilliard, Brett Winslow, Matt Kerins, Scott Touzinsky, David McKienzie and Robert Tarr as the only seven 49ers to reach 1,500 kills during their career at The Beach. BITTNER AMONG LBSU ALL-TIME LEADERS IN THREE CATEGORIES: Senior Dean Bittner already ranks among the all-time leaders in three separate career categories at Long Beach State. Bittner is fourth all-time (tied with Mark Kerins) with 33 matches with at least 20 kills. He needs five more to pass Tom Hoff (1995-96) for third on the list. Bittner also has moved into fourth all-time in service aces with 96. He needs 37 more to pass Brent Hilliard (1990-93) for third all-time. Bittner is also seventh in career kills with 1,509. He needs 48 more to pass Robert Tarr (2003-06) for sixth on the all-time list. ALEXANDER MOVING UP CAREER CHARTS IN A PAIR OF BLOCKING CATEGORIES: Dan Alexander is moving up the career charts in both blocks and matches with at least 10 blocks. Alexander has moved into eighth all-time in blocks with 394. He needs just six more to become just the eighth player in school history to record 400 blocks, and he can move into seventh on the all-time list passing Duncan Budinger (2003-06) with 12 more. Alexander also has 10 career games with at least 10 kills, which ranks fifth all-time. He needs one more to tie Matt Prosser (1998-01) for fourth on the list. KLIPSCH FIFTH IN CAREER ASSISTS AT LBSU: Junior Mike Klipsch is in the top five in career assists at Long Beach State. The junior from St. Louis, Mo., has 2,984 career assists and needs 143 assists to pass Steve Walker (1995-96) for fourth on the all-time list. Klipsch is currently second on the depth chart behind Conor Eaton at setter and hasn\u2019t started since the season opener against California Baptist. LBSU PICKED SEVENTH IN PRESEASON MPSF POLL: Despite returning every starter except libero Dustin Watten, Long Beach State was picked to finish seventh in the preseason MPSF Coaches Poll. The Beach collected 58 points in a vote of the 12 league coaches. Defending MPSF Tournament champion USC edged defending national champion UC Irvine as the preseason pick to win the conference. The Trojans finished with 112 points and five first-place votes, while the Anteaters tallied 110 points and five first-place votes. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A release from Long Beach State to get you prepped and ready for Friday’s home match for the 49ers.<\/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-2327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327","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=2327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2327"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=2327"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}