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Long Beach State came for a coronation, a celebration and exclamation point to its remarkable season. A trophy would be nice, too.

The No. 1-ranked Beach got exactly what they wanted Saturday in a 3-2 victory against UCLA in the NCAA Men’s Volleyball National Championship match. The team stopped the No. 3 Bruins, 25-19, 23-25, 20-25, 26-24, 15-12, then held the coveted trophy up for the hundreds of black-and-gold clad fans among the Pauley Pavilion crowd of 7,428.

“I couldn’t be more proud or happy for our guys and the entire Long Beach nation who came out tonight,” Coach Alan Knipe said. “Whether you are former players or administrators, or the president or mayor – everyone who came out tonight – and all the fans and players who were packing this place.

“I know it didn’t feel like the Pyramid but it didn’t feel like an away match, either.”

The title was a long time coming. The team lost the previous two seasons in the NCAA semifinals and was determined to push further this season. The Beach overcame a loss in its final regular-season match and rolled through the Big West tournament to secure a spot in the national semifinals. Again.

Unlike the previous two seasons, though, the Beach beat Ohio State to reach the championship game and once, there wasn’t going to go home empty handed. But that championship feeling didn’t come without some nervous moments.

The Beach won the first set handily but had trouble handling UCLA’s serves and lost the next two sets. Long Beach fell behind quickly in the fourth but managed to rally and eventually pull even at 20. Neither team flinched in the final minutes, the match coming down to National Player of the Year Josh Tuaniga’s serve on set point. He forced a decisive set with a clean ace.

“Honestly, when I served that ball and it landed, I don’t know how close it was, but I thought it was out,” said Tuaniga, MVP of the tournament. “I was devastated. And then I see the linesman just do that with a flag (signal it good) … it was all good from there.”

The final set played out a lot like the other four. Close scores, great serves and key plays. When Nick Amado took a pass from Tuaniga and spiked it down the middle, hundreds of Beach fans stormed the court. The season was over and the celebration was about to begin.

“It means the world to us,” outside hitter Kyle Ensing said. “Looking back on our last two years, losing in the semifinals, that’s always in the back of our minds and going into that match, we always had that in the back of our minds.

“We really pushed ourselves a lot in this match and we came out on top. It means the world.”

It was the first national title for the men’s volleyball program since 1991, when Knipe was a player.

“(TV commentators) asked me does this vindicate or anything from the past couple of years? It’s not vindicating, it’s a process,” Knipe said. “A lot of praise goes to these three guys sitting up here. They went to the Final Four as freshmen and sophomores and now they are juniors.

 “It’s part of the process. It’s growth. It’s development. It’s maturity. They deserve it. They played hard. They trained hard. They went through the process with their teammates,” Knipe said.

One More

Nick Amado went to each of his teammates after Long Beach State won its semifinal match at the NCAA Men’s Volleyball Championships, telling them all the same thing.

One more.

The No. 1-ranked Beach knocked off two-time defending national champion Ohio State, 3-1, on Thursday to move into Saturday’s championship, but the celebration was muted. Outside of a few hugs, there were no high fives or fist pumps.

That's because the Beach needs one more.

The Beach has lost in the semifinals the previous two seasons, missing out on a chance to win the school’s second NCAA title. The Beach won its lone title in 1991, when Coach Alan Knipe was a player and Amado wanted to remind his team that their mission isn’t over.

Knipe wasn’t surprised by his team’s low-key mentality after an emotional ending. Long Beach (27-1) needed seven match points to put away the resilient Buckeyes.

“We’ve played a lot of matches on back-to-back nights this season against the same opponent and we’ve had something of a halftime mentality,” Knipe said.

Still, Knipe said the players reminded him that their work is not finished. There’s one more match to be played.

“The guys were already throwing it back to me before I got into the locker room, so I don’t think so,” Knipe said of any complacency of reaching the final.

“I look forward to getting back out there and preparing for Saturday and having these guys get the chance to play for a national championship.”

The Beach won the first two sets as Amado blasted a shot on set point for a 2-0 lead. The Buckeyes didn’t back down. They scored six consecutive points in the third set to take a commanding 18-13 lead. The Beach didn’t flinch, either.

Long Beach outscored Ohio State, 6-2, to get back into the set, 20-19, and received a loud ovation from the dozens of Beach fans at Pauley Pavilion. The set remained close until Ohio State closed it out, 27-25, on an ace by Jake Hanes.

“The match was kind of out there for both teams and you had to stay in there,” Knipe said. “I’m pretty proud of our guys because the gap was pretty big at that point and we came back and had a chance to steal that game. There’s no doubt that played a big part on how we started the fourth set.”

The Beach, behind the standout play of Kyle Ensing and TJ DeFalco, rolled to a 5-2 lead in the early going of the final set. Ohio State came back and tied it a seven and neither team gained more than a two-point edge. Ohio State erased six match points before Josh Tuaniga, AVCA Division I-II Men’s Player of the Year, sealed the victory when he dumped the ball on match point.

“The boys played some nice defense on that play, but they got jumbled up so I didn’t have any big hitters to set so I decided to take a chance,” Tuaniga said. “As I said, it was a back-and-forth thing in my head and as it was falling, I thought ‘please go down. Please go down.’

“I was happy I was able to make a play and celebrate with my boys after.”

 

 

Strong Start Instills Confidence

Long Beach State men's volleyball team won its season-opening match. The Beach won their next one and the one after that. The team dropped just one game in their first 12 matches and ran their streak to 26 consecutive victories, defeating UCLA and Hawai’i, Loyola of Chicago and others along the way. They improved each game, each week, each month.

Twenty-seven teams lined up against Long Beach State this season and 26 left the gym with a loss. Only Hawai’i was able to defeat the No. 1-ranked Beach on the final day of the regular-season, handing the team a five-game wake-up call.

“(The loss) lit a fire under us,” said junior setter Josh Tuaniga. “It gave us a little more fuel to push us into this last part of our season.”

The defeat provided only a minor stumble on Long Beach State’s quest for a national championship as the Beach swept Cal State Northridge and Hawai’i to win the Big West Conference tournament title and earn the top seed in this week’s at UCLA.

The Beach and No. 2 BYU were placed in , having earned byes into the semifinals.

Feeling the heat? Not this team.

 “You have to understand that being in that type of position (No. 1 team) and it comes with every game,” said Tuaniga, named winner of the 2018 Lloy Ball Award. “They are going to give you their best game. We embraced that, we wanted that. This was something we had to be good at if we wanted to get to the Final Four and going all the way.

“We’ve learned from the past two years of going but not going all the way.”

Twice, BYU has come between the Beach and the national championship trophy. The teams have met in the semifinals the previous two seasons, with the Cougars winning handily.

This time, should Long Beach (26-1) get past the winner of the UC Irvine (21-9) and Ohio State (23-5) in the semifinals, they could see BYU in the championship. BYU (22-6) faces the winner of the UCLA (24-7) and Harvard (13-13) match in its first match.

“For as long as I can remember, being a kid and watching the bigger guys play college and international matches, I have wanted this,” said junior outside hitter TJ DeFalco, recently awarded the 2018 Karch Kiraly Award. “Being somewhat there right now, it’s like a dream come true.”

Getting to this point took hard work, determination and bonding. The Beach returned three All America starters from last season – hitter Kyle Ensing, winner of the 2018 Bryan Ivie Award, DeFalco and Tuaniga. The rest of the starting lineup, however, was comprised of newcomers, giving the Beach a slightly different complexion.

Knipe said the players gelled during the early-season trips that took the team from Canada to the Midwest and to the east coast over a period of five-plus weeks.

“We started off going to Canada right around the New Year and then we played in the Santa Barbara tournament, said Knipe, Big West Coach of the Year. “We traveled to Chicago and … then we came home and went to Stanford. Then we landed on the east coast and played Harvard and George Mason. There weren’t only good volleyball teams we had to deal with, but travel, weather and other things that can go a million different ways for you.

“But what we got out of it was we were playing better and better each week and we didn’t have anything crazy happen. We didn’t get stuck in a snow and didn’t play a match. The scheduling part went well and what you get out of that is really good time spent with the team on the road.

“Then we started to have this team’s identity.”

And that might be as national champions.