<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
That headline is misleading, because it’s not bad luck, exactly—it’s a poor decision made by the decision-makers behind the 2008 NCAA Women’s Volleyball Championship Bracket. <\/span>Long Beach State, which just the night before the bracket was released had defeated no. 19 Colorado State soundly, got two hard breaks. <\/span>First, they’re playing Pepperdine, an incredibly tough opponent for the 25-5 49ers to draw in the first round. <\/span>That falls within the realm of reasonable bracket construction, though—especially on the west coast, teams are going to have tough first round matches.<\/span><\/p>\n Harder to swallow, however, is the location of the match. <\/span>Many on the team had hoped that Long Beach State would be hosting a regional, and their win over Colorado State was supposed to help that hope along. <\/span>The team figured that, at worst, they’d have a short drive to the match—Nicole Vargas said on Saturday that she expected to bus to UCLA. <\/span>However, not only did LBSU not<\/i><\/span> get a regional, they won’t really even be playing in the region, as they’re going to have to drive north to get to Stanford, where they’ll be playing Pepperdine. <\/span>There are two<\/i><\/span> regionals that are closer, one at UCLA and one at USC.<\/span><\/p>\n That USC gets to host a regional is puzzling—they finished 16-11 on the season, after all. <\/span>The NCAA must believe they’ll sell more tickets, or be afraid of the fabled USC alumni base…In any event, the 49ers will be playing in Palo Alto against a tough Pepperdine Waves team, at 4:30pm on Friday. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" LBSU will be traveling to Stanford, where they’ll have to face a strong Pepperdine team in the first round, Friday at 4:30pm.<\/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-5228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5228","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=5228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5228"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5228"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}