<\/p>\n
It wasn’t the win they wanted\u2014but the Long Beach State women’s volleyball team got the win they needed against Northridge Saturday night, sweeping 25-12, 27-25, 28-26. <\/span>Caitlin Ledoux hit .370 with 11 kills and Naomi Washington led The Beach with 14 kills in a victory that snapped a two-match slide in Big West play, improving the 49ers to 12-5 overall, and 5-2 in the Big West. <\/span>Northridge is now 6-14, and 2-5 in conference.<\/p>\n After two straight losses, and going against a weaker team, Saturday was the perfect time for the 49ers to come out and make a statement that the last two matches were behind them\u2014even though they impressed at times, they didn’t quite put the performance together they wanted. <\/span>In the first set, the Matadors jumped out to a 5-0 lead; 49ers coach Brian Gimmillaro chose to let his team play through the rocky start, a decision that paid off as his squad ran off a 9-0 run. <\/span>The totality of the set after the stumble amounted to a 25-7 run, thanks to dominant play from the Niners’ big guns, Washington and Ledoux; Michelle Osunbor also recorded three blocks as Long Beach held Northridge to -.167 hitting in the opening frame. In the second and third sets, Long Beach held leads of 22-20 and 20-17, but still needed extra points to put Northridge away. <\/span>In the deciding frame, the ‘Niners had to fight off set point three times before finally putting the match away\u2014they didn’t come back decisively, but because of two service errors, and a double-touch from the Matadors. <\/span> Aside from Ledoux and Washington, Osunbor looked good, with four blocks; Ashley Lee had 32 assists and 10 digs, for her eighth double-double of the year. While praising the talent level of Northridge and bemoaning his team’s recent flu problems\u2014problems that have really <\/em>been sweeping through Long Beach’s athletic community the last seven days\u2014Gimmillaro said the ‘Niners still have “all kinds of adjustments to make,” if they’re going to reclaim the lead in the Big West. <\/span>A UC Davis upset of UCSB Saturday night puts the ‘Niners in third, a full game back of UC Irvine (at 6-1) and a half-game back of Davis (6-2). <\/span> Illnesses and anxieties and mid-season blues aside, Gimmillaro says his team knows what needs to be done if they’re to climb back atop the pile. <\/span>“We can’t lose anymore\u2014we can’t. <\/span>We have to win them all.” The ‘Niners will be back at home next weekend, first facing some past greats in their alumni exhibition at 6:30pm on Friday; they’ll then host Fullerton (3-4 in conference) on Saturday at 7pm.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It wasn’t the win they wanted, but the ‘Niners got the win they needed with a sweep of Northridge Saturday night.<\/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-3051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051","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=3051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3051"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=3051"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}