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No blocks. No aces. No answers.
No. 4 Long Beach State had no problem with No. 5 Hawaii on Friday night, taking advantage of the Rainbow Warriors’ ineffectiveness on both offense and defense. The 49ers outblocked the Warriors 10-0 and finished with an 8-0 edge in aces in a 25-19, 25-14, 25-18 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation volleyball sweep.
Sophomore hitter Kyle Ensing led the way for Long Beach State (6-1, 3-1 MPSF) with 11 kills and no errors on 19 swings. Sophomore hitter TJ DeFalco had five of the team’s aces as the 49ers committed just three hitting errors, one in each set.
Sophomore Stijn van Tilburg — starting out on the left side and moving to opposite in Set 3 — had 10 kills for Warriors (5-2, 0-2) and freshman middle Patrick Gasman added nine kills with no errors on 11 attempts over the 80 minutes at the Walter Pyramid. Hawaii will try to snap its two-match skid tonight at No. 6 UC Irvine (6-1, 3-1), the last of the first road trip of the season.
The Anteaters survived in five at winless UC San Diego (0-5, 0-4) on Friday night.
Asked about thoughts on lineup changes for tonight, Hawaii coach Charlie Wade said, “Lots of thoughts.
“We’ll do a little soul-searching. It was 18-all in the first set, we were right there, and then it went sideways and we never got it going again,” he added. “It’s a tough league we play in every night. We’ve got a lot of young guys on their first road trip. … It was more mental and emotional than physical.”
Hawaii used 13 of its 14 players in trying to find a rhythm that resembled Wednesday’s five-set loss to the 49ers. It was the first time since Jan. 30, 2014 that the Warriors had no aces and the first time since at least 2000 that they’ve gone without a block.
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