<\/p>\n
Report by LBSU<\/span><\/p>\n Dean Bittner had 19 kills and hit .351 but it wasn\u2019t enough as Long Beach State dropped a 30-26, 30-23, 30-27 decision to No. 2 Cal State Northridge Friday night at the Walter Pyramid in a Mountain Pacific Sports Federation match. The Matadors (5-0, 2-0 MPSF) won behind the strength of a .366 hitting percentage as well as 9.5 team blocks. Theo Edwards led CSUN with 17 kills, while Kevin McKniff added 14. Junior Antwain Aguillard paced Long Beach State with a .899 (8-0-9) hitting percentage, while Dan Alexander hit .545 (7-1-11). Conor Eaton finished with 44 assists. Long Beach State(2-3, 1-1 MPSF) hit .272 for the match. The two teams battled back and forth in the first game with the Matadors taking an early lead by The Beach battling back to tie it at 18. Cal State Northridge then went on a run getting eight of the next 10 points to take a 26-20 lead. Andy Read turned to Tommy Pestolesi off the bench and the senior responded with a kill and a block to cut the Matadors lead to 26-22. The 49ers would get within two (27-25) on a kill by Alexander and an ace by Bittner to force a CSUN timeout. LBSU couldn\u2019t get any closer losing the set 30-26. Aguillard led a balanced 49er attack in the set with four kills. Jim Baughman and Friend each had three kills, while Bittner, Alexander and Pestolesi had two kills each. Eaton had 13 assists. Edwards led CSUN with six kills in the first set. LBSU never led in the second set. Northridge jumped out to an early lead and built it to as many as eight. The Matadors finished off The Beach taking a 2-0 lead in the match with a 30-23 win. Northridge hit a blistering .471 in the second set while LBSU struggled hitting .211. Bittner had seven kills and a .357 hitting percentage in the game, while Alexander had four kills and an .800 hitting percentage. Edwards led the Matadors with five kills. It looked like LBSU would extend the match by winning the third set. The 49ers built led most of the game and had a 24-21 lead matching their biggest lead of the match. But the Matadors rallied scoring the next three points to tie it at 24. CSUN eventually took the lead for good at 28-27 and won scoring the last three points of the match. Bittner finished with 10 of his kills in the final set and hit .438 for the game. Pestolesi added four kills as the 49ers outhit the Matadors .350 to .325 in the set. Edwards and McKiff each had six kills in the game. Northridge had four team blocks in the final set including one by Edwards on the final point. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s a touch match any time the Niners play Northridge, but being swept wasn’t how they wanted to kick off 2010.<\/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-2391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391","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=2391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2391"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=2391"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}