UCLA
Long Beach State
UCLA Outlasts Long Beach State with a 3-2 Victory
March 04, 2011 | Men's Volleyball
March 4, 2011
Los Angeles, CA -
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The 8th ranked UCLA men's volleyball team went five sets once again with Long Beach State 49ers, but prevailed by the score of 3-2 to take the season series 2-1.
The Bruins improved to 11-9 on the year and are now 6-8 in MPSF play. This was also the third time the two schools went to five sets this season after the teams split the first two matches. Game scores were 18-25, 25-16, 25-19, 23-25 and 15-13.
Both schools fought hard in a back-and-forth match as they went into the fifth set tied at two sets apiece. The Bruins started off fast and got up by a score of 9-6 after a Kyle Caldwell kill. They would then push their lead up to 13-10, but the 49ers pushed back and scored the next three points to tie it at 13-13. However, Long Beach would commit a service error to put UCLA up one and then Caldwell ended the match with his 17th and final kill of the game.
There were four Bruins who scored double-digit kills to help lead the team to a dramatic victory. The aforementioned Kyle Caldwell led UCLA with 17 kills while freshman Gonzalo Quiroga followed that up with 16 kills of his own. Quiroga also chimed in with a career-high 17 digs in the victory while Caldwell recorded 13, just one shy of his career-high. Junior Weston Dunlap had 11 kills against the 49ers and also set a career-high with 8 digs. Dunlap and Quiroga weren't the only ones to set career-highs though, as junior Jeremy Casebeer hammered home 15 kills, a new-career best for the outside hitter from Santa Barbara.
Overall, the Bruins hit .285 as a team while holding the 49ers to just .230. Jim Baughman led Long Beach State with 21 kills.
UCLA's next match will be Wednesday, March 9th, against the Penn State Nittany Lions at 7:00 p.m PT in Pauley Pavilion. Fans at home can follow the match live on gametracker or listen to a live audio broadcast on uclabruins.com.
