California State University at Northridge
Vanguard
CSUN Concludes Homestand vs. Vanguard & No. 6 Stanford
1/31/2023 4:39:00 PM | Men's Volleyball
MATADORS THIS WEEK
MATCH #9:
Vanguard Lions (1-1) at CSUN Matadors (4-4)
Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023Â - 7:00Â p.m. PT
Premier America Credit Union Arena - Northridge, Calif.
ESPN+
Live Stats
MATCH #10:
No. 6 Stanford Cardinal (6-1) at CSUN Matadors (4-4)
Friday, Feb. 3, 2023Â - 5:00Â p.m. PT
Premier America Credit Union Arena - Northridge, Calif.
ESPN+
Live Stats
In-game Twitter updates:Â @CSUNMensVB
FORÂ STARTERS
The CSUN men's volleyball team (4-4, 0-0 Big West) wraps up its seven-match homestand this week, hosting Vanguard (1-1) on Wednesday and No. 6 Stanford (6-1) in a pair on non-conference matches. The Matadors, 3-2 on their current homestand, will host a Welcome Back Alumni night mixer following Friday's match against Stanford. Between 50-75 CSUN men's volleyball alumni are expected to attend.
FOLLOW YOUR MATADORS ONLINE
All Matador 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. 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.
NVA/AVCAÂ TOP-15 NATIONAL COACHES POLL - JAN. 30
After receiving votes in the first two polls of the 2023 season, CSUN (4-4) remained in the "Others Receiving Votes" section again this week. The Matadors picked up seven points in the Jan. 30 NVA/AVCA Men's Division I-II Coaches poll, up two points from last week. CSUN, which received a season-high nine points in the preseason poll on Jan. 2, 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.
Hawai'i (7-0) is the top ranked team for the fifth consecutive poll, collecting all 21 of 22 first-place votes and 329 total points. UCLA (7-0) remains second with one first-place vote and 308 total points. The rest of this week's top five remained unchanged with Long Beach State (5-0) third, Penn State (6-1) fourth and Pepperdine (7-1) fifth. Stanford (6-1) moved up to sixth this week, followed in the top-10 by UC Irvine (7-1), Ball State (4-2), Grand Canyon (6-0) and USC (6-2). The remainder of the week three top-15 includes BYU (5-1), Loyola-Chicago (7-0), BYU (5-1), Ohio State (6-2), Lewis (5-4) and UC Santa Barbara (1-6).
SCOUTING THE OPPOSITION
VANGUARD (1-1)Â opened the season with a two-match road split against Benedictine-Mesa in Arizona (Jan. 27-28). The Lions defeated the No. 2 Redhawks in the finale as Will Anderson and Kyle Anema combined for 37 of the team's 51 kills in the four-set win. Anema leads Vanguard averaging 3.63 kps on .400 hitting. Wednesday's match is just the third meeting between CSUN and Vanguard since 2020, the Lions' first season of men's volleyball. The Matadors swept the first two meetings between the two teams in both 2020 and 2022.
STANFORD (6-1), ranked sixth in this week's NVA/AVCA Top-15 Poll, improved to 6-1 on the season with a 25-21, 25-22, 25-20 non-conference win over UC Santa Cruz on Saturday. The Cardinal hit .329 as a team as Alex Rottman posted a season-high 15 kills on 25 swings to hit .560. Stanford is hitting .321 as a team through seven matches. Friday's match is the 76th meeting all-time between CSUN and Stanford dating back to 1979. The Cardinal lead the all-time series, 44-31 after the two teams split a pair of matches in 2022. CSUN won 3-1 in Northridge after falling in straight sets in Stanford last season.
CSUN CONCLUDES LONGEST HOMESTAND SINCE 2012
The Matadors' two matches this week against Vanguard and Stanford mark the conclusion of CSUN's seven-match homestand. Originally an eight-match homestand, the schedule was revised after the Jan. 12 match against Edward Waters was canceled. CSUN, currently 3-2 on the homestand, wraps up its longest stretch of home matches since 2012 when the Matadors finished 5-4 on a nine-match homestand from Feb. 29-Mar. 24. The program record for consecutive home matches is 11 straight from Feb. 4-Mar. 17, 2004 when CSUN finished 8-3. The Matadors also had a seven-match homestand in 2009 (finished 7-1) and a trio of six-match homestands in 1980, 2003 and 2020.
MATADOR OUTSIDES OFF TO IMPRESSIVE STARTSÂ
Kyle Hobus and Griffin Walters are both off to impressive starts to the 2023 season. Either Hobus and Walters has been the Matador kill leader in seven of the first eight matches this season, with Hobus leading five times and Walters twice. Hobus, a redshirt junior, surpassed 500 career kills with 25 kills over two matches last week. Hobus, who now has 517 career kills in three-plus seasons at CSUN, is averaging a career-high 3.50 kills per set on a career-high .286 hitting. Walters is also setting career-highs through eight matches. He is averaging a career-best 2.73 kills per set while hitting .269, also a career-high. Walters, who also leads the team with 14 aces, had 14 kills against No. 2 UCLA which is his best output since also posting 14 kills in CSUN's 3-0 win over UC Merced in February, 2021.
CSUN VS. RANKED TEAMS
After dropping their first four matches of the season to ranked teams, the Matadors get their fifth opportunity of the season on Friday against sixth-ranked Stanford. CSUN's four losses this season have come against two teams, UCLA and USC. The Matadors fell to the No. 2Â Bruins in their season-opener on Jan. 5 and again last Friday. CSUN also fell to No. 10 USC on Jan. 6 and last Wednesday. The Matadors are now 2-19 against teams ranked in the NVA/AVCA Top 15 dating back to the start of the 2022 season. The Matadors last win against a top-10 team came last March when CSUN knocked off No. 9 UC San Diego in La Jolla in straight sets. The Matadors also upset No. 12 Stanford in Northridge on Feb. 26. CSUN finished the 2022 season 2-15 against ranked teams after playing an entire season of ranked teams in the COVID-shortened 2021 season, finishing 2-9 in 11 matches.Â
MATADOR QUICK SETS Â
Redshirt freshman Lance Krenik made his first start since the 2022 season opener when he started at setter against UCLA on Friday. Krenik handed out a career-high 28 assists as the Matadors hit a solid .358 against the second-ranked Bruins. Krenik's first career start also came against the Bruins on Jan. 27, 2022, as he posted season-highs of 17 assists, four digs and two blocks ... at 3.50 kills per set, Hobus moved up to third in the Big West in kills per set. He also ranks sixth in points per set at 4.04.Â
MATADORS IN THE BIG WEST Â
2023 marks CSUN's sixth season as a member of the Big West in men's volleyball. Since the conference's inaugural season in 2018, the Matadors are 12-38 (.240) in 50 Big West matches over their first five seasons. CSUN finished 5-5 in the inaugural Big West season in 2018 before finishing 3-7 in 2019, 2-8 in 2021 and 1-9 in 2022. 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 the 2019, 2021 and 2022 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.
THEO EDWARDS NAMED CSUN'S MEN'S VOLLEYBALL COACH
Theo Edwards, CSUN's associate head coach since 2019, was named the successor to Jeff Campbell on Dec. 9, 2022. Edwards completed his 12th season on Campbell's coaching staff in 2022. He was promoted to associate head coach in August 2019 and served as the program's recruiting coordinator. He has been instrumental in CSUN's top recruiting classes over the last several years as the Matadors have brought in a host of AVCA Top 50 high school players. As a four-year letterwinner for the Matadors, Edwards had his finest season as a senior in 2010 as the Matadors reached the NCAA Tournament semifinals. He was the team captain of the squad that became just the second CSUN team, and first since 1993, to reach the NCAA Tournament.
LOOKING AHEAD
Following the conclusion of their seven-match homestand, the Matadors open a three-match East Coast road stretch on Feb. 8 against Princeton. CSUN will also visit NJIT (Feb. 10) and Fairleigh Dickinson (Feb. 11) before returning home to host Benedictine (Ill.) on Feb. 16.
#UniteTheValley
