California State University at Northridge
Long Beach State
Matadors Close Regular Season With Two vs. Long Beach State
4/15/2022 8:55:00 AM | Men's Volleyball
MATCH #20Â (BIG WEST #9)
CSUN Matadors (6-13, 1-7Â Big West) @ No. 3 Long Beach State (17-4, 6-2 Big West)Â
Friday, Apr. 15, 2022Â - 7:00Â p.m. PDT
Walter Pyramid - Long Beach, Calif.Â
ESPN+
Live Stats
MATCH #21 (BIG WEST #10)
No. 3 Long Beach State @Â CSUN Matadors
Saturday, Apr. 16, 2022Â - 7:00Â p.m. PDT
Premier America Credit Union Arena - Northridge, Calif. Â
ESPN+
Live Stats
In-game Twitter updates:Â @CSUNMensVB
FORÂ STARTERS
The CSUN Men's Volleyball team (6-13, 1-7 Big West) wraps up the 2022 regular season this week with a home-and-home series against third-ranked Long Beach State. The Matadors, 5-5 at home this season, travel to the Walter Pyramid on Friday (Apr. 15) before hosting the Beach at Premier American Credit Union Arena Saturday at 7 p.m. Following this week's final regular season series, CSUN will return to Honolulu for the 2022 Big West Men's Volleyball Championship which gets underway Apr. 21 at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.
FOLLOW YOUR MATADORS ONLINE
All CSUN home matches this season will be streamed live on the ESPN+ platform with Darren Preston handling a majority of the play-by-play this season. Victoria Dennis and Kyle Friend will also handle to call on select matches, including Saturday's home finale. Fans can also follow CSUN Matador men's volleyball on-line at the official home of CSUN athletics, www.GoMatadors.com for related links to the match, including for any live stats, audio and video. Fans are also encouraged to check the CSUN Athletics Department's official Twitter feed (@GoMatadors) and the volleyball-specific feed (@CSUNMensVB) for news and notes throughout the week as well as updates of matches in progress.
SCOUTING THE OPPOSITION
Long Beach State (17-4, 6-2 Big West) also closes out the regular season this weekend. The Beach needs just one win this weekend to win the Big West Regular Season Title and clinch a No. 1 seed in the Big West Tournament. Long Beach, 14-1 at home this season, leads the Big West in hitting and ranks third in the nation with a .346 team hitting clip. The Beach has the current conference Defensive Player of the Week and Freshman of the Week in Simon Torwie and Alex Nikolov.
Series:Â The two matches this week mark the 73rd and 74th meetings all-time between the Matadors and UC Irvine with the two teams tied at 36 wins apiece. The two teams split the season series in 2021 with each team winning in four sets at home. CSUN is 19-13 all-time against the Anteaters in Northridge and 17-21 all-time in Irvine.
NVA/AVCAÂ TOP-15 NATIONAL COACHES POLL - APR. 11Â (WEEK 15)
After earning votes in three straight NVA/AVCA Top-15 Coaches polls (Feb. 29-Mar. 14), CSUN (6-13) was not listed in the latest poll released Apr. 11. The Matadors received a season-high 12 points in the 2022 preseason poll before receiving nine points in week one (Jan. 10), seven points in week two (Jan. 17), six points in week eight (Feb. 28) and three points in consecutive weeks (Mar. 7, 14). CSUN was last ranked among the top-15 on Jan. 13, 2020 when the Matadors were 13th in the 2020 preseason coaches poll. Prior to that, CSUN had been ranked in the AVCA Top-15 for 62 consecutive weeks and 262 of the last 289 weekly polls dating back to the 2002 season.
UCLA remained number one for the eighth straight week as the Bruins (19-3) earned 17 of 19 first-place votes and 283 total points. Penn State (22-3) moved into second this week, earning one first-place vote followed in the top-five by Long Beach State (17-4, one first-place vote), Hawai'i (20-5) and USC (19-6). UC Santa Barbara (16-8) dropped to sixth this week followed in the top-10 by Ball State (20-3), Pepperdine (14-9), UC San Diego (13-9) and Grand Canyon (16-9). The remainder of this week's top-15 includes Loyola-Chicago (17-8), Stanford (12-11), Lewis (15-11), UC Irvine (10-13) and McKendree (14-10).
CSUN CELEBRATES SENIOR NIGHT
Saturday's match against Long Beach State marks the final home appearance for six CSUN seniors, Cole Chea, Ryan DeWeese, Taylor Ittner, Joe Picone, Greg Pond and Daniel Wetter. One of CSUN's all-time leaders in hitting percentage, Wetter currently ranks second in program history with a .450 hitting percentage. Jacek Ratajczak is the program's all-time leader in hitting at .457 from 2007-10. Wetter, a four-year letterwinner since 20-19, comes into the final week of the regular season with 576 career kills and just 112 errors on 1,030 career attacks over 249 career sets. Wetter is a 2020 AVCA All-American and also a two-time first team All-Big West selection (2021, 2020). DeWeese is also a four-time letterwinner since debuting for the Matadors in 2019. He has 137 career kills in 151 career sets, along with 38 career aces and 75 career digs. Ittner, a freshman All-American in 2019, has been limited by injuries over the last few seasons. He has 1,436 career assists in 148 career sets which ranks seventh in the Matadors' Rally Scoring era. Picone is a two-year Matador after transferring from Miramar College prior to the 2021 season. Chea is also a two-year letterwinner in 2020 and 2021, collecting 64 kills and 19 blocks in his career. Pond has played in 19 career sets in his three seasons, putting down 22 kills on .531 hitting as a redshirt freshman in 2020.
MATADOR NOTESÂ
Kyle Hobus put down a CSUN season-high 23 kills, hitting .405 on 42 swings Friday against UC Irvine ... Wetter had an impressive week in the matches against UCI. In the opener of the two-match series in Northridge on Friday, Wetter knocked down 13 kills on 19 errorless attacks while also adding two assists, one dig and one block. On Saturday at UCI's Bren Center, the middle blocker from Camarillo led all hitters in the match, putting down 15 kills - which matches his season-high - while hitting an impressive .667 on 21 swings. Wetter committed just a single hitting error in the two-match series with UCI, winding up with 28 kills on 40 attacks to hit .675 in the two matches ... Donovan Constable has a team-high 544 assists in 19 matches this season which is the most by a CSUN freshman since Taylor Ittner posted 992 as a freshman in 2019. Constable, who has made 18 starts this season, ranks fifth among Big West setters averaging 9.38 assists per set ... With a career-high 121 kills this season from sophomore Griffin Walters, CSUN now has three players with at least 100 kills. Walters ranks third on the team to Hobus (178) and Wetter (131) ... 12 of the Matadors' 13 losses this season have come to teams ranked in the NVA/AVCA Top-15 poll, while their 13th came against NJIT which was the top team in the "Others receiving votes" in the national poll.Â
CAMPBELL PICKS UP 325TH CAREER WIN
CSUN's 3-0 win over Cal Lutheran on Jan. 28 was the 325th career win for CSUN head coach Jeff Campbell. In his 25th season at the helm of the program, Campbell now boasts a career record of 330-347 and has been the most successful coach at CSUN over the past 17 years. Campbell has posted 279 wins (nearly 14 wins per season) since the 2003 season which is quite an accomplishment considering the Matadors have annually played in the toughest men's volleyball conference in the country.
Now in his 25th season, he is the all-time winningest coach in CSUN men's volleyball history with 330 career victories. Campbell become the program's all-time winningest coach during the 2010 season, reaching the 150, 200, 225 and 250 career win milestones over the last 10 seasons. Currently the second-longest tenured head coach at CSUN (men's golf coach Jim Bracken is in his 36th season), Campbell has earned double-figure win totals in 20 of his previous 24 seasons on the bench, posting a career-best 24 wins in 2009.
MATADORS IN THE BIG WEST Â
The 2022 season marks CSUN's fifth as a member of the Big West Conference in men's volleyball. Since the conference's inaugural season in 2018, the Matadors are 11-27 (.289) in 38 Big West matches. CSUN finished 5-5 in the inaugural Big West season in 2018 before finishing 3-7 in 2019 and 2-8 in 2021. The 2020 conference season was not contested due to COVID-19. The Matadors reached the semifinals of the Big West Tournament in 2018 in Long Beach before falling in both the 2019 and 2021 quarterfinals in Hawai'i. Prior to 2018, CSUN played 25 seasons as a member of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) from 1993-2017 and 16 seasons in the Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (WIVA) from 1977-92.
LOOKING AHEAD
After this week's two-match series with Long Beach State, CSUN will prepare for the 2022 Big West Men's Volleyball Championship, presented by the Hawaiian Islands which will feature all six Big West squads converging on the court at SimpliFi Arena at the Stan Sheriff Center on the campus of Hawai'i April 21-23, 2022.
#UniteTheValley
