LONG BEACH — The Long Beach State men’s volleyball team wasn’t going to be left behind on Tuesday evening.
Second-seeded Long Beach recovered from a slow start to sweep seventh-seeded Belmont Abbey, 25-18, 25-14, 25-11, in an NCAA Tournament quarterfinal match at the Walter Pyramid.
LBSU (26-2) advanced to the semifinals for the third straight season and will play the winner of a match between third-seeded Grand Canyon and sixth-seeded Ohio State on Thursday afternoon.
Long Beach joined top-seeded UCLA and fourth-seeded UC Irvine in the Final Four.
“At this point, you want to move on and our guys did a good job of that,” Long Beach State coach Alan Knipe said. “I think we settled in nicely and got the offense going.”
Long Beach was led by Sotiris Siapanis with 11 kills and Skyler Varga and Nathan Harlan with 10 each.
“Our passing was lights out tonight, so it really made it easy for me,” Long Beach setter Aidan Knipe said.
Long Beach (26-2) faced its biggest push from Belmont Abbey (of North Carolina) early in the first set.
Harlan was blocked for a second time to give the Crusaders a 5-3 lead, but shortly after that Harlan served an ace followed by three more winners to give Long Beach an 8-5 advantage.
Belmont Abbey (21-5) was still within three at 16-13 when a kill by 6-foot-10 middle blocker Simon Torwie was followed by back-to-back hitting errors by Belmont Abbey for a 19-13 lead.
An errant set gave LBSU game point and another hitting error by the Crusaders ended Game 1.
“There were a lot of long rallies and they dug a lot of balls,” Alan Knipe said of Belmont Abbey. “You could tell the moment was not too big for them.”
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The Crusaders took their final lead of the second set at 5-4 before Long Beach scored five straight points capped by a service ace from Varga for a 9-5 lead. LBSU followed with another five in a row to extend its lead to 14-6 and Belmont Abbey never got closer than seven the rest of the set.
LBSU then jumped out to a 10-2 lead in the third set and was able to coast the rest of the way, ending the match on a kill by reserve middle blocker Lazar Bouchkov.
“We’ll take a deep breath and enjoy tonight,” Alan Knipe said. “Have the guys enjoy part of the Final Four experience (Wednesday) night at the social. The most important thing for us is to keep advancing and keep playing a Long Beach State brand of volleyball.”