{"id":3388,"date":"2009-08-30T07:39:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-30T07:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/sports\/lbsu-women-s-vball-loses-heartbreaker-to-texas\/"},"modified":"2009-08-30T07:39:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-30T07:39:00","slug":"lbsu-women-s-vball-loses-heartbreaker-to-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/lbsu-women-s-vball-loses-heartbreaker-to-texas","title":{"rendered":"LBSU Women’s VBall Loses Heartbreaker To Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Photo by Stacy Starr<\/em> <\/span><\/p>\n

After the fourth set of Long Beach State’s match against no. 2 Texas, the band started playing Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”\u2014it was an apt selection, as the no. 23 ‘Niners, who’d played so sloppily against San Diego the night before, were just one set win away from a magical upset.  <\/span>Unfortunately for the team, and the 1,700+ who came to watch them, the clock struck midnight right around 9:15, as Texas ripped out to a 5-0 lead in the fifth and never looked back, winning the match 22-25, 20-25, 25-18, 25-23, 15-9.  <\/span>“We had a chance to do something they’d never forget,” said head coach Brian Gimmillaro after the match, shaking his head for a second straight night over missed opportunities. <\/p>\n

Things started out well enough\u2014things started out unbelievably actually, for those in the crowd who’d seen the match against San Diego.  <\/span>Long Beach, clearly playing with pride, roared out of the gate, with Naomi Washington and Brittney Herzog leading the way as they took the first set 25-22, and never trailing.  <\/span>Herzog said she thought the previous night’s performance spurred them on.  <\/span>“It calmed us down,” she said.  <\/span>“Tonight we knew we had nothing to lose.”<\/p>\n

And they played like it in the second set, too, shading Texas’ hitters and holding them to just .097 hitting.  <\/span>The ‘Niners continued to play under control, and surged to a 20-12 lead with strong performances from Herzog and Jocelyn Neely, who rebounded from Friday night to hit .438 on the night to lead her team.  <\/span>After that, though, Texas woke up.<\/p>\n

In the third, they hit .400 and looked unstoppable\u2014they found enough holes in Long Beach’s net front to hit cleanly, and with their height and power, hitting cleanly meant putting dents in the Pyramid floor.<\/p>\n

The fourth was the most frustrating for Gimmillaro, as his team lost a closely-fought battle\u2014Texas didn’t lead by two until they’d taken the set at 25-23.  <\/span>His team again looked lost towards the end, missing an easy ball when the game was tied at 23, and getting aced the next point.  <\/span><\/p>\n

“We played with focus tonight, but still we lost that focus at the end of the fourth,” he said.  <\/span>“Against a team like that, you’ve got to take your opportunities.”<\/p>\n

The fifth set proved anticlimactic, as Destinee Hooker and the rest of the Longhorns looked like the bigger, more talented team for the first time all evening.  <\/span>Hooker, who led all players with 26 points despite just .226 hitting, was dominant in the fifth, helping on each of her team’s first five points as they got out to an insurmountable lead.  <\/span>Washington, Herzog, and Caitlin Ledoux tried to battle back in, but the effort ran out of gas.  <\/span>Ledoux and Washington combined for 40.5 points, while Herzog had 12.5 and hit .281.  <\/span>The ‘Niners committed 8 service errors, and several over-the-net errors.  <\/span><\/p>\n

It was good to see the team playing with pride and passion, but Gimmillaro says a narrow defeat presents its own form of agony.  <\/span>“Last night was hard to take,” he said.  <\/span>“But this is really <\/em>hard.”  <\/span>Long Beach State’s next match will be at home next Friday at 1pm, against UMBC, and later that night, at 7pm, against Indiana State.  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ‘Niners took a 2-0 set lead over the no. 2 Longhorns, but lost the final three sets to fall to 0-2 on the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":16964,"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-3388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3388","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=3388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3388"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=3388"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}