Rob McLean and Jo\u2019Lon Clark posted 16 kills to help lead host Long Beach City College to a 3-1 win over Irvine Valley College in Semifinal #2 of the 2012 California Community College Athletic Association Men\u2019s Volleyball State Championship on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Long Beach, champions of the Western State Conference, won the match by scores of 25-20, 24-26, 25-21, 25-19 to advance to Saturday’s state championship final match at 7:00pm against Orange Coast College.<\/p>\n
The opening set was tight with nine ties. Neither team led by more than two until late in the set. With the score tied at 20, a service error by Zak Beard gave LBCC a 21-20 advantage. Behind the serving of Luc Sybunroeung, the Vikings rallied for the final five points, including consecutive blocks by Aniefre Etim-Thomas to close out the win, 25-20.<\/p>\n
Long Beach appeared well on its way to taking Set 2, but couldn\u2019t put away Irvine Valley. Clark\u2019s late kill gave LBCC set point at 24-22. But a kill by Beard and three straight Long Beach hitting errors allowed Irvine Valley to steal the set by a final of 26-24.<\/p>\n
The Vikings came out focused in the third, jumping ahead 5-2. But a pair of kills by IVC\u2019s Trevor Lund and two Long Beach errors put the Lasers back ahead 6-5. With the score tied at 11, LBCC put together another run with two kills and an ace from McLean and a block by Etim-Thomas and Clark to jump ahead 14-11.
Long Beach led 24-18 but once again had trouble putting away the Lasers. A kill by IVC\u2019s Jeff Austin, a block by Mark Metrakos, and a Clark hitting error got Irvine Valley within three at 24-21, but a crosscourt kill from Clark sealed the third-set win.<\/p>\n
LBCC closed it out with an impressive win in Set 4. Long Beach built a commanding 19-12 lead that the Lasers couldn\u2019t recover from. Clark once again capped the win with a kill off McLean\u2019s pass to send the Vikings to their first state title match since 2009.<\/p>\n
Etim-Thomas had a match-high nine blocks to go with six kills for Long Beach (16-2). Max Wechsung posted 28 assists, seven kills, and nine digs.<\/p>\n
For Irvine Valley (12-8), Lund led the Lasers with 14 kills. Beard totaled 12 kills and Metrakos had 10 kills. Kevin Fiske led all with 42 assists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rob McLean and Jo\u2019Lon Clark posted 16 kills to help lead host Long Beach City College to a 3-1 win over Irvine Valley College in Semifinal #2 of the 2012 California Community College Athletic Association Men\u2019s Volleyball State Championship on Thursday night. Long Beach, champions of the Western State Conference, won the match by scores of 25-20, 24-26, 25-21, 25-19 to advance to Saturday’s state championship final match at 7:00pm against Orange Coast College.<\/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-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535","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=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}