California State University at Northridge
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Dominican University of New York
No. 16 CSUN Hosts Dominican Before Top-20 Clash in Malibu
2/5/2025 2:48:00 PM | Men's Volleyball
MATADORS THIS WEEK:
MATCH #10:
Dominican University New York (1-4) @Â No. 16 CSUN Matadors (7-2)
Friday, Feb. 7, 2025Â - 6:00Â p.m. PT
Premier America Credit Union Arena - Northridge, Calif.
ESPN+
Live Stats
MATCH #11:
No. 16Â CSUN Matadors @ No. 10 Pepperdine Waves
Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025Â - 5:00 p.m. PT
Firestone Fieldhouse - Malibu, Calif.
B1G+
Live Stats
In-game XÂ updates:Â @CSUNMensVB
CSUN Men's Volleyball Media Notes
FORÂ STARTERS
The 16th-ranked CSUN Men's Volleyball team (7-2, 0-0 Big West) returns home on Friday to host Dominican University New York (1-4) before venturing across the Valley to Malibu to tangle with 10th-ranked Pepperdine (4-2) on Saturday. The Matadors won twice at the Uvaldo Acosta Memorial Tournament in Fairfax, Va. last weekend, sweeping Saint Thomas Aquinas before topping No. 20 George Mason in four sets.
FOLLOW YOUR MATADORS ONLINE
Friday's match against Dominican will be streamed live on ESPN+ with Ghizal Hasan on the call. Saturday's match at Pepperdine will stream on B1G+.
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 any live stats, audio and video. Fans are also encouraged to check the CSUN Athletics Department's official X feed (@GoMatadors) and the volleyball-specific feed (@CSUNMensVB) for news and notes throughout the week as well as updates of matches in progress.
CSUN REMAINS 16TH IN AVCA NATIONAL COLLEGIATE MEN'S VOLLEYBALL POLL
Despite traveling across the country for a pair of wins last week, the Matadors (7-2) remained16th in this week's AVCA National Collegiate Poll (Feb. 3). CSUN matched its season-high with 139 points this week, equaling the total it received on Jan. 20. The Matadors, ranked in all 17 polls last season, have now been ranked in all five polls this season (15th three times, 16th twice). Prior to moving back into the AVCA national poll (#15 on Feb. 6, 2023) for the first time since the 2020 season, CSUN had previously 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.Â
Long Beach State (8-0) remained the No. 1 team in this week's poll, earning 21 of 23 first-place votes and 458 total points. UC Irvine (7-0), which earned the other two first-place votes, remained second with 439 points followed in the top five by UCLA (6-1), Hawai'i (8-0), and USC (8-0). BYU (6-4) dropped to sixth this week, followed in the top 10 by Loyola Chicago (8-0), Ball State (7-3), Stanford (3-3), and Pepperdine (4-2). The second half of this week's top-20 poll includes Grand Canyon (7-1), Lewis (7-2), UC San Diego (7-2), Ohio State (3-5), UC Santa Barbara (6-2), the Matadors (7-2), Penn State (0-6), Princeton (3-3), Lincoln Memorial (7-0), and George Mason (4-4).
SCOUTING THIS WEEK'S OPPONENTS
Dominican (1-4), which opens a three-match West Coast trip on Friday, has lost four straight matches since opening the season with a 3-0 win over Barry University. The Chargers have since lost to Daemen (3-0), D'Youville (3-0), Sacred Heart (3-0), and NJIT (3-0). In the loss to NJIT on Saturday, sophomore OH Ayden Shaw led the Chargers with eight kills, three digs and three block assists. Dominican is 0-4 in matches away from Orangeburg, NY this season.
All-time series: Friday's match between the Matadors and Chargers is the first-ever between the two schools in men's volleyball.
#10 Pepperdine (4-2) snapped a two-match skid with a 3-0 sweep over #12 Lewis at home on Saturday. The Waves, who saw their season opening four-match win streak snapped by No. 1 Long Beach State (3-2) on Jan. 26, served eight service aces in the win over Lewis including four from Jose Gomez, and three from Cole Hartke. Pepperdine, which hosts Dominican on Sunday, has played all since matches this season at home.
All-time series: Saturday's match is the 87th meeting all-time between CSUN and Pepperdine dating back to the inaugural meeting in 1978. The Waves have won 65 of the previous 86 meetings including 34 of the 41 matches in Malibu. Pepperdine has won 13 straight in the series dating back to CSUN's last win at home in 2013. The two teams met in Northridge last season with the Waves winning in five sets (15-12 in the 5th).
PHILLIPS DOUBLES UP AGAINST GEORGE MASONÂ
Redshirt sophomore Jalen Phillips earned his first career double-double with 22 kills and 12 digs in the Matadors' 3-1 win over No. 20 George Mason. Phillips reached double figures in kills for the eighth time in nine matches this season but posted double figures in digs for the first time in his collegiate career against the Patriots. His previous high in digs was eight against UC Irvine last March. Phillips' double-double is the first by a CSUN player since Donovan Constable had 47 assists and 12 assists against UC Irvine in 2024.
CSUN VS. RANKED OPPONENTSÂ
The Matadors picked up their first win over a ranked opponent this season, topping No. 20 George Mason in Virginia on Sunday. CSUN will get its third opportunity to upset a top 10 team this weekend at No. 10 Pepperdine. The Matadors dropped their first two matches this season against ranked squads, falling to No. 3 UCLA (3-1) and No. 6 USC (3-1).
CONSTABLE CAREER ASSISTS WATCHÂ
With 72 assists in two CSUN wins last week, senior Donovan Constable inched closer to seventh place in CSUN program history. Constable increased his career total to 2,899 career assists which now trails Travis Magorien and seventh place by just 12 assists. The senior from Clovis has already moved past Sam Porter this season, Porter had 2,711 assists from 2016-19. Constable in one of four Matador setters in the program top-10 to play in the Rally Scoring era of collegiate volleyball. He ranks sixth in CSUN's Rally Scoring era assists list. With his next 101 assists this season, he would become just the seventh player in program history with 3,000 career assists.
CSUN QUICK SETSÂ
As a conference, the Big West has won 88% of its matches through the first four weeks of the 2025 season. With Long Beach State (8-0), Hawai'i (8-0), and UC Irvine (7-0) unbeaten and UC San Diego (8-2), the Matadors (7-2), and UC Santa Barbara (6-2) each with a pair of losses, the Big West is off to 43-6 start ... With a 3-0 win over Saint Thomas Aquinas on Saturday, CSUN has now swept four of its first nine opponents this season. Conversely, the Matadors have yet to drop a 3-0 match ... Freshman Stilian Delibosov leads the Big West in a pair of categories this week, hitting percentage (.489) and blocks per set (1.54). Constable also leads the conference in assists per set (11.18) and is sixth in aces (0.64) and 14th in digs per set (1.46).
MATADORS IN THE BIG WEST Â
The 2025 season marks CSUN's eighth as a member of the Big West in men's volleyball. With a 3-7 regular record in 2024, the Matadors are now 15-45 (.250) in 60 Big West matches over seven seasons since the conference's inaugural campaign in 2018. CSUN finished 5-5 in the first Big West season in 2018 before finishing 3-7 in 2019 and 2024, 2-8 in 2021 and 1-9 in both 2022 and 2023. The 2020 conference season was not contested due to COVID-19. Prior to 2018, the Matadors 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.
EDWARDS OPENS THIRD SEASON AS HEAD COACH
Theo Edwards opens his third season as CSUN's head coach in 2025 after leading the Matadors back into the AVCA national rankings in his first two seasons. Now in his 15th season at CSUN, Edwards was named the successor to Jeff Campbell on Dec. 9, 2022. CSUN finished 12-16 in Edwards' first season (1-9 in the Big West) as CSUN moved back into the national rankings for the first time in three seasons. The Matadors received a season-high 91 points to rank a season-high 12th on Mar. 13. Last season, CSUN advanced to the semifinal round of the Outrigger Big West Championship for the first time since 2018 and finished the season with a 13-16 (3-7 Big West) record and a No. 14 national ranking.
LOOKING AHEAD
Following Saturday's match at Pepperdine, CSUN will return home to open its longest homestand of the season. The Matadors host Jessup University on Feb. 14 to open up a six-match homestand that concludes against Princeton on Mar. 12. CSUN will also welcome No. 11 Grand Canyon, Cal Lutheran, Sacred Heart, No. 1 Long Beach State, and No. 17 Princeton on the homestand. The Matadors' match against the top-ranked Beach on Mar. 5 is the Big West opener for both teams.
#GoMatadors
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