9:30am | One of the fan favorite marketing promotions in the Pyramid is the scoreboard game where a kid wins by following the bouncing ball with the LB logo. Last weekend the kid actually found it, ignoring the usually good advice from the Beach Pep Band, and walked home the proud owner of some sort of sandwich. Other bouncing ball results, well not so good.
The most significant bad bounce was the upset loss to Oregon State in the finale of the Baden Classic women’s volleyball tourney. The format is the usual three games in 24 hours for everybody so no complaining about being tired is acceptable. Dancing with the rule book however is different.
Here’s the back story. First on “fatigue”, from the Niner fan perspective. “Both starting middles do not practice the full two hours and many times do not practice at all. I am assuming that their conditioning is what makes them fade in long matches. The coaching staff needs to put in fresh bodies when the starters start to fade because the bench can contribute. Also, the freshman setter needs reps with the starters to get some type of timing established and that are not happening right now.”
Next we address the “fair play” factor. It was in the third set with the match tied at one game each. LB waltzed 10-25 in game one, and then lost 25-20. LB battled in game three but found a weak link in the Beaver dam and the Niners scored three straight points in the third set to pull within one at 14-13. Oregon State’s head coach Terry Liskevych is a long time rival of Gimmillaro, from his days at Pacific (’76-‘84) and then as the head coach for USA volleyball during the time that Misty May said no thanks.
The head ref was Robert Okamura but Terry played him like a violin. He took a yellow card for too many time outs but that caused a delay which upset Brian. He got more upset when action finally resumed but the Beavers had overlapped a couple of players, the refs didn’t catch the illegal rotation and as BG told the media, “It changed the match,” he said. “It’s like someone being 10 feet off-sides in football and the officials not calling it. We had scored against the formation and all of sudden they switched back row players. It’s the kind of thing you just don’t miss.”
Footnote, maybe the pollsters were watching. Long Beach stayed in the top 25 at #24. Others Receiving Votes and appearing on two or more ballots: Tennessee 63; Florida State 51; Texas A&M 41; Kansas 25; Central Florida 24; Arizona 20; Western Kentucky 20; Missouri 16; Dayton 15; Kentucky 14; UC Davis 10; Cincinnati 7; Louisville 5; St. Mary’s (Ca.) 5; Tulsa 5; Northern Illinois 4. I am not sure whether it is Mr. or Ms. “Mo” but, gender aside, I think that dame or duke fortune might be wearing black and gold this fall but we will see this weekend when Idaho comes in Friday night.
Wobbled a bit by in 0-2 trip to Milwaukee Women’s Soccer beat Princeton, 3-1 and Hawaii, 3-0 and then (now 4-3-1) lost to Cal, 2-0 and tied San Diego State, 1-1 (2ot). This week the sweethearts of futball play at San Diego Friday, 7:30 p.m. in San Diego, then vs. Saint Mary’s Sunday, 1 p.m. on George Allen Field.
The BWC conference drama came from SLO. Though he was relieved as head coach of Cal Poly volleyball only four matches into the season, Jon Stevenson has neither been fired nor has he resigned his position, Mustangs athletic director Don Oberhelman told the local media last week. Oberhelman said it was his decision to replace the seventh-year head coach with third-year assistant coach Caroline Walters prior to the team’s trip to Utah for a three-game tournament this past weekend.
“All my decisions are based on what I believe is best for our student athletes,” said Oberhelman, who was hired in March. “The timing, I understand, is probably the worst possible timing you can have for a situation, but I’m new to Cal Poly and needed to study the situations and decided a few weeks ago that this was the best.”
The ousted coach told the SLO Tribune, “This team should be winning and the girls should be having a great experience,” Stevenson (whose Mustang team had been beating said via text message. And then he was gone.
Under the waters, the No. 9 Men’s Water Polo (7-0) beat up on the lesser of the local area Vanguard 16-5, d. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps 10-5, d. Occidental 18-4, d. Whittier 11-4 and whipped LaVerne 22-5. LB averaging 15.6 goals per game in first seven games. This week it gets much tougher playing USC, UCI etc. in the Stockton tourney.
Cleaning up a John Mallinger note he still has a good shot at earning his PGA card for 2012. As John is not a fully exempt member of the PGA Tour this year (he is a Conditional member based on being between #126-150 on last year’s Money List) he is not required to play in a particular week’s Tour event, even if he is eligible for it.
While insiders think he is playing the Vegas Tour event, it makes sense for him to play the Nationwide the rest of the year, as he probably only needs another $100,000 in the 7 remaining events out there to get a Card, but he needs well over half a million in the remaining 4 Tour events, and he may not make the field in each of those. Got it, question on the mid terms.
Finally some actual baseball notes. Kendall Rogers says that UCLA add 600 chair back seats to Jackie Robinson Stadium for the upcoming season. Fullerton’s former assistant Sergio Brown joined Eric Newman’s staff at UCSD and ex Dirtbag Joey Terdoslavich (now with the Lynchburg Hillcats) has been named the Braves Organizational Player of the Year. Joey bested all other hitters in the Braves organization, and broke a 65-year old Carolina League record by collecting 52 doubles, in his first full professional season. Terdoslavich also ranked third in the Brave minor league organization in home runs (20), second in slugging percentage (.526), second in total bases (254), first in extra base hits (74), and fourth in batting average (.286) and RBI (82). He is a switch-hitting first baseman drafted last year in the sixth round out of LBSU and was a transfer from Miami. He has baseball roots, as his uncle is longtime Boston Red Sox star Mike Greenwell.
Closing Notes. Is the time right for the Big Brown Music Machine to be selected for the LBSU Hall of Fame? Precedent? They did the ’89 WVB team this week. — DR. DAN