UCLA, Long Beach survive wild NCAA men’s volleyball semifinals

LONG BEACH, California — In the end, No. 1 will play No. 2. But what rocky, obstacle-strewn paths UCLA and Long Beach State took to survive and advance to get to Saturday’s title match of the NCAA’s National Collegiate Men’s Volleyball Championship. Top-seeded UCLA, the defending national champion, opened play Thursday at Long Beach State’s […]

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LONG BEACH, California — In the end, No. 1 will play No. 2.

But what rocky, obstacle-strewn paths UCLA and Long Beach State took to survive and advance to get to Saturday’s title match of the NCAA’s National Collegiate Men’s Volleyball Championship.

Top-seeded UCLA, the defending national champion, opened play Thursday at Long Beach State’s Pyramid with a 22-25, 25-20, 25-16, 18-25,15-12 victory over fourth-seeded UC Irvine.

The Bruins won without knowing that the latter half of that match was played in lockdown, no one in and no one out, as the international wave of pro-Palestinian/Gaza protests made it to the campus in full force.

And then second-seeded Long Beach State had to pull off an improbable 24-26, 26-28, 25-18, 25-23, 15-10 reverse sweep against never-say-die Grand Canyon in a match that had no shortage of trash talking and chirping between the teams.

Ten sets. A combined nearly six hours of on-the-edge-of-your-seat, high-flying, big-time-play men’s college volleyball that was ESPN highlight ready — if only the Worldwide Leader were showing either match — that could only be seen on NCAA.com.

“Wow,” Long Beach State coach Alan Knipe said. 

“I think both the matches lived up to what everybody was hoping that the four best teams in the country would deliver.”

And then some.

But wait: There’s more. Saturday’s match should be all that and more. The 2 p.m. Pacific final will be shown on ESPN with Paul Sunderland and Kevin Barnett on the mics.

Long Beach State beat UCLA in four on February 9 in the Pyramid as Sotiris Siapanis had 18 kills in the 25-22, 21-25, 25-27, 19-25 victory.

The next day, at UCLA, the Bruins won 29-27, 27-29, 25-19, 25-20 to hand then 10-0 Long Beach State its first loss. Five UCLA players had eight or more kills, 16 by Grant Sloane, who will likely not play Saturday.

UCLA back into the title match

UCLA (25-5) had to rally in a big way against the Big West’s UC Irvine (20-11) in a match that saw both teams lose key players. UCLA’s Sloane, a 6-foot-8 outside who is fourth on the team in kills, was clearly distraught when he went down with an ankle injury in warmups. 

“We had a quick chat and said let’s do it for Grant,” said UCLA senior Merrick McHenry, the MPSF player of the year.

UCI, leading 11-7 in the first set, then lost 6-2 outside Akhil Tangutur to an apparent leg injury. The junior, who had two kills in four errorless attacks at the time, did not return but his team didn’t miss a beat and went on to win the first set.

There was a long way to go, of course.

“That was an incredible volleyball match,” UCLA’s John Speraw said. “I think you saw so many significant swings. I think you saw a great volleyball team in UC Irvine. They played great volleyball. I’m really sorry that Akhil got hurt. He’s playing great. To their credit, they lose Akhil and they just keep coming. Everybody else on that team stepped up and played great.”

UCLA hit .404; UCI .303. The Bruins, who had an 11-7 blocks advantage, had four aces and 24 serving errors. UCI had six aces — five in the fourth set — and 27 errors.

The stats that mattered most, ultimately, were in the fifth set, when UCLA hit .444 with nine kills and one error in 18 attacks. That included three kills in five errorless swings for Ethan Champlin and two kills in four errorless attacks for Ido David.

Champlin led UCLA with 19 kills — five each in the first and third sets — hitting an overall .469, and had four assists, an ace, a block and 13 digs. Cooper Robinson had 11 kills, hit .304, and had three assists, an ace but seven errors, four blocks and three digs.

McHenry had 10 kills — a few on quicks from the middle that were nothing short of spectacular — with two errors in 14 attacks to hit .571 and had a dig and six blocks. David had nine kills, an ace but seven errors, four blocks and seven digs. Setter Andrew Rowan had a kill in two errorless tries, 41 assists, an ace, three blocks and three digs.

“I’m really proud of our guys for going through that emotional up and down — which we haven’t experienced yet this year — and to come back from being a little bit down in the fifth to tying it and making some plays in the end,” Speraw said. 

“You couldn’t have scripted it better. I think it’s going to make us better as a team and I’m just thrilled for the guys.”

Hilir Henno, the Frenchman who on Wednesday was named the AVCA national player of the year, was his usual spectacular offensive self. He had 22 kills, hit .311, and added three assists, nine digs and four blocks, three solo. But he had one ace and eight of his team’s serving errors.

Nolan Flexen had 13 kills, an assist, no aces and four errors, a block and six digs. 

Of Henno, Flexen said, “This is the greatest player I’ve ever played with.”

Maxim Grigoriev had 11 kills with one error in 16 attacks, two aces, two blocks and two digs. Setter Brett Sheward had three kills in as many tries, 43 assists, a block and six digs. 

“I’m proud of the guys and the way we played,” UCI coach David Kniffin said. “We got thrown a curve ball early when Akhil went down. I thought we responded well to that. I checked in with him and he was willing to do the press conference here, but honestly, there were just too many stairs.”

UCLA, which beat Hawai’i in four for the title a year ago, is in the championship match for the 28th time. Speraw is going for his fifth title. He also won as the coach at UCI in 2007 and 2009 and 2012, the year before he took over for Al Scates at his alma mater. Speraw, also the USC Olympic coach, who will take Sunday and Monday off before getting to work with that squad on Tuesday, won two NCAA titles as an assistant to Scates and two as a player (1993, ’95).

Long Beach battles back

Long Beach (27-2) won its 19th in a row in The Pyramid, where the crowd of 3,786 got raucous as the team began its comeback.

“The home court advantage was real,” GCU setter Nicholas Slight admitted.

“Huge credit to Grand Canyon,” Knipe said. “They’re a handful. There are so many athletes on that team and they do some things to really stress you. And it created a little bit of a gut check for us, obviously, because we found ourselves at the end of two sets statistically doing really well in a lot of areas better than our opponent but we found ourselves down 0-2.”

Indeed, the first two sets had to be maddeningly frustrating for his team. The Beach trailed 24-20 in the first before tying it, but GCU won on back-to-back kills by Cameron Thorne.

In the second set, Long Beach was down again, this time 21-17, before again forging into a 24-24 tie. Long Beach had set point at 25-24 before GCU won the set 28-26 on a kill by Gianni Camden and Camden’s and Rico Wardlow’s block of Clarke Godbold.

“We had a big hill to climb,” Knipe said. “But this team is pretty special and they realized that there was a play here and there in those sets that it could have gone either way and they needed to let that go, they needed to flush that and to get to the next set.

“And they were great. They were so dialed in and the energy was great.”

His son, senior setter Aidan Knipe, recalled how Long Beach also trailed UCLA 2-0 in the 2022 national semifinals before not only rallying for a reverse-sweep victory. Long Beach then was swept by Hawai’i in the title match.

“This team has been through this before,” the younger Knipe said. “There really wasn’t much said, it was just guys carrying themselves with confidence and knowing what we needed to do … It was more about finding our stride and our confidence.”

Skyler Varga led Long Beach with a career-high 20 kills, hitting .293 with two assists, an ace, five blocks and eight digs. Siapanis finished with 16 kills, four in the fifth set after staying on the court after the fourth set to take a handful of practice swings. He had two assists, an ace, two blocks and four digs.

DiAeris McRaven had nine kills and hit .583 to go with two blocks. Nathan Harlan had eight kills with one error, three assists, an ace, six digs and two solo blocks. Simon Torwie had five kills with one error in 12 attacks, a dig and nine blocks, one solo. He also had three aces and gave GCU fits on serve receive all match long. Aidan Knipe, who gets to play one more match for his father, had two kills, 52 assists, three blocks and seven digs. Mason Briggs had 10 digs and two assists and even a kill in his only try, which came off a dig.

Long Beach hit .326 and had seven aces and 21 errors. GCU hit .267 and had two aces — both by Jackson Hickman — and 16 errors.

Camden Gianni led the Lopes with 17 kills, hitting .300, and had an ace, four digs and five blocks, one solo. Jarrett Anderson had 16 kills, hit .344, and had two assists, no aces but seven errors, a block and nine digs. Hickman had 11 kills, five assists, those two aces, four blocks and three digs. Thorne had 11 kills, hit .389, and had six blocks and a dig. Cooper Herndon had 14 digs and an assist, and Slight had two kills, 50 assists, a block and eight digs.

GCU ended the best season in program history (26-5) after a campaign that included two losses to UCLA and one each to UCI and Hawai’i. The Lopes were undersized but extremely quick and gritty.

“We had the chances to close that out early,” said GCU coach Matt Werle, whose team trailed 18-16 in the third set. ” … It’s disappointing but we can leave with our heads held high.”

Long Beach State won the 2018 and 2019 national titles and was ranked No. 1 when the season was canceled in 2020.

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