The Long Beach State men’s volleyball season came to a screeching halt on the floor of the USC Galen Center on Thursday night, as the 49ers fell to the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos in the semifinals of the MPSF Tournament.<\/p>\n
UCSB advances to face No. 1 seed USC in the MPSF title game on Saturday. The winner of the MPSF Tournament earns an automatic bid to the NCAA Final Four.<\/p>\n
Long Beach came into the game as the No. 3 seed, and had already defeated the No. 5 seed UCSB twice this season (3-0 and 3-1). But the 49ers won only the second of four games on Thursday, as their two hottest players stalled and a whopping 22 service errors doomed them to defeat.<\/p>\n
Senior outside hitter Josh Riley had just been named the Sports Imports\/AVCA National Player of the Week after dominating in a win over Stanford, but the 6-3 Riley had just 12 kills on .207 hitting against UCSB. Senior middle blocker Antwain Aquillard had been named an AVCA Division I-II Men’s All-American just hours before the game and did register 9 kills on .353 hitting, but the block specialist stopped just three Gaucho shots on Thursday. <\/p>\n
Freshman hitter Taylor Crabb led the 49ers with 14 kills while fellow frosh Connor Olbright registered 49 assists. But Long Beach hit .226 to Santa Barbara’s .256, while scoring fewer overall digs (36 to 44) and blocks (8.5 to 15).<\/p>\n
Santa Barbara senior outside hitter Jeff Menzel led all players with 23 kills on .302 hitting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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