By Jimmy Friery
SANTA BARBARA, CA – The Santa Barbara City College Men's Volleyball team lost to top-of-the-conference Long Beach on Friday night in a reverse sweep, 3 sets to 2.
The Vaqueros are now 3-4 in conference play, right in the middle of the 7-team WSC. They have lost to every team above them in the standings and beaten every team below them.
SBCC put Long Beach on upset alert early, leading the majority of the first 2 sets. The match started with a handful of Long Beach mistakes, and Cole Richards earned a left-handed kill to give the Vaqs a 10-6 first set lead. Later, a Cameron Brown kill ballooned the lead to a comfortable 17-10 before Long Beach crawled back to 20-18. Richards struck an ace to make it 22-18, and the set eventually ended as a 25-20 Vaqueros victory.
After a 7-4 Long Beach lead to start the second set, a chaotic sequence of points resulted in a 15-14 SBCC lead. If one was unaware of the conference standings, it would have been hard to guess Long Beach was 6-0 based on their performance and energy. The Vaqueros went on a 5-1 run from there, into a Long Beach timeout at 20-15. Long Beach then went on a 4-1 run of their own, shrinking the Vaqs' lead to 21-19. No worries, as the Vaqueros would close out the set by winning the next 4 points—a 25-19 win.
Cruising to 2 set wins so far, the Vaqueros opened up set three with an 8-4 deficit that turned into 12-7. That trend continued steadily throughout the set to 19-11 LBCC. Long Beach was forced to take a timeout after the Vaqueros got back to 20-16, but that would be the closest it would get on the way to a 25-19 Long Beach win to stay alive.
Richards had 2 kills early in set four, which began tied at 3. Long Beach rattled off 5 in a row and 7 of 8 to give themselves a 10-4 lead. Suddenly, it seemed like a fifth set tiebreaker was more and more of a possibility. After getting back to 12-8, Long Beach pulled away for a 25-16 win, forcing a winner-take-all fifth set.
Long Beach started the fifth set up 4-1 before a service error. The Vaqueros rallied, and an Andreas Schuetz kill gave them the lead at 6-5. Shortly after, the Vaqueros held a 9-7 lead before a 4-0 Long Beach run, culminating with an ace, shifted momentum again. A service error and Griffin Hurd block brought the score to a dead even 11-11, though. However, later at 13-11 LBCC, Hurd saved a point by kicking the ball up at the net, as did Brown diving at the foot of the stands, but a third consecutive Long Beach kill ended the rally with them serving at match point. Troy Fitzgerald earned a kill, and an error on the next point meant the Vaqueros were one point away from tying the score at 14-14. Long Beach closed out the match, though, with a kill to complete the comeback.
Unfortunately, the Vaqueros have been snakebitten in close matches so far this year. All 3 of their 3-2 matches have been reverse sweep losses, with the fifth set ending 13-15 or 14-16.
The Vaqueros will look for redemption of one of such matches, a rematch at Santa Monica next Wednesday at 6:00 PM.
