The Long Beach State women’s volleyball team extended their win streak to seven after posting a season-high hitting percentage in a sweep of Cal State Northridge Saturday night at the Walter Pyramid.
The 49ers (13-7, 7-0) continued their hot start coming off last weekend’s victory against Hawai’i for first place in the Big West conference and defeated the CSUN Matadors (6-12, 2-4) 25-14, 25-21 and 25-15.
LBSU had a season-high .425 hitting percentage, while middle blocker Ashley Murray had her own season best as she hit at a .643 clip.
“We’ve had practice time,” LBSU coach Brian Gimmillaro said. “We’re known as a team that gets better with time, but we have to have practice and the last three weeks we’ve had four or five days of practice each week, which makes us better.”
Things started off shaky for the 49ers as setter redshirt sophomore Missy Owens opened the game with an out-of-bounds serve and did the same shortly after that caused Gimmillaro to call the first timeout of the game as the 49ers trailed the Matadors 8-5.
The 49ers quickly regrouped on the court and gained momentum after outside hitter Nele Barber’s block tied the first set at nine and led the Matadors to their first timeout.
That timeout did not prove to be much help to CSUN, as LBSU went on to increase its lead to 16-11 that forced the Matadors to call a second timeout.
The Matadors had a total of 11 errors and a .073 hitting percentage in the first set, giving the 49ers a convincing 25-14 win.
“[The errors] take a little bit of pressure off us to get into the next play, but at the same time we don’t want to rely on their errors to win a game,” Murray said. “So, I think we did a good job today of putting balls away and making sure we’re scoring the points.”
The second set proved to be more of a matchup as LBSU had a comfortable lead of 21-10, but CSUN soon rallied on an 11-1 run to cut that deficit to 22-21. The 49ers held onto the lead and took set two with a score of 25-21.
LBSU completed the sweep in set three as the 49ers beat CSUN 25-15, while they hit an impressive .609 hitting percentage and maintained control of the match, letting the Matadors take the lead just once.
“I think moving the ball around and spreading out our offense has been a big thing,” Murray said. “With [Owens] starting to dunk the ball, that’s a huge, huge addition for us. It gets a lot of our other hitters open so we could score more.”
The 49ers have a road trip this weekend at UC Santa Barbara (12-8, 3-4) Friday and Cal Poly (12-6, 5-2) Saturday. LBSU swept both teams earlier this season.
