Photos by John Fajardo
This year’s Long Beach State women’s volleyball team has a ceiling that’s nearly as high as the pointed roof of their home, the 18-story tall Walter Pyramid. Their biggest enemy this year has been focus—the difference between a sweep victory of UCLA, and a four-set loss to conference foe Pacific. Last week, the ‘Niners swept Northridge, but struggled to maintain focus as they let the Matadors come back and force the second and third sets to extra points. Last night, against Fullerton, Long Beach was much more consistent in a 25-17, 28-26, 25-17 sweep of the Titans.
“When we’re good, we’re really good,” said ‘Niners libero Lauren Minkel after the match. “And when we’re bad, we’re really bad—we do lose focus at times, and we just have to get some consistency.”
Against Fullerton, it was obvious when the ‘Niners weren’t focused, but those times were blessedly few and far between. In the first set, Brittney Herzog paced the ‘Niners to a fast lead, and Long Beach showed talent in both phases of the game. On offense, Ashley Lee’s setting was crisp, and helped the ‘Niners notch 11 kills on .286 hitting. Defensively, they held Fullerton to .171, and limited the Titans’ offensive leader, Erin Saddler, to just .111 hitting.
Saddler, who has almost a third of Fullerton’s attempts on the year, never got going on Saturday, getting just eight kills on 34 attempts, with five errors.
In the second, the Titans jumped out to a 5-1 lead thanks to two block by Kayla Neto, who was effective against Naomi Washington at times. Later, a 4-1 run gave the ‘Niners a 9-8 advantage, before they turned around and gave up a 6-1 run to dig themselves into a hole down 18-16. Two consecutive ‘Niner mistakes almost cost them the set, when nobody picked up a dig by Minkel, letting it fall slowly to the middle of the floor, and then when Saddler served an ace to give Fullerton a 23-21 lead.
Washington and Caitlin Ledoux dug the ‘Niners out of trouble, as they ended up winning 28-26. Coach Brian Gimmillaro was pleased with the way his team regained their composure in the second set. “I wanted to win that one,” he said, “To get a tough win.”
The third set was the question mark—would a two-set lead make the team complacent? It certainly didn’t on defense, as the ‘Niners held the Titans to their worst hitting of the night (just .047), and holding Saddler and Neto to just four kills between them, which Herzog beat by herself with five. An 18-8 lead was eroded by six straight Fullerton errors, before Gimmillaro called a timeout, and his team dug in to finish on a 7-3 run.
With the win the 49ers improve to 13-5 overall, 6-2 in the Big West. The trio of Herzog, Washington and Ledoux finished with ten, nine and nine kills respectively, and Minkel had 23 digs, to go along with Ledoux’s 12. With the win and some other shakeups in the conference, the ‘Niners are back in the driver’s seat in the Big West, just a half-game back of UC Irvine and Davis, who are both at 7-2 and will have to travel to the Pyramid in the coming weeks.
Next up for Long Beach is a Friday/Saturday road trip to Cal Poly, and a brutal Halloween night match in UC Santa Barbara; Cal Poly is 2-8, while the Gauchos are just a half-game back of the ‘Niners, and will be featuring a hefty (and perhaps unhealthy) home-court advantage as they play on the 31st. “But it’s early,” said Gimmillaro. “If we win it’s not the end, if we lose it’s not the end.”
