California State University at Northridge
UC Irvine
6-Seed CSUN Opens Outrigger Big West Championship vs. 3-Seed UCI
4/23/2025 4:12:00 PM | Men's Volleyball
OUTRIGGER BIG WEST CHAMPIONSHIP:
MATCH #29 (QUARTERFINAL MATCH #2)
No. 6 seed CSUN Matadors (18-10) vs. No. 3 UC Irvine Anteaters (20-6)
Thursday, Apr. 24, 2025Â - 10:00Â p.m. PT/7:00 p.m. HT
SimpliFi Arena @ Stan Sheriff Center - Honolulu, O'ahu
ESPN+
Live Stats
In-game XÂ updates:Â @CSUNMensVB
CSUN Men's Volleyball Media Notes
FORÂ STARTERS
The CSUN Men's Volleyball team (18-10, 3-7 Big West) is the No. 6 seed in this week's Outrigger Big West Men's Volleyball Championship and will open the tournament Thursday (Apr. 24) against No. 3 seed UC Irvine (20-6, 6-4 Big West) at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center in Honolulu, O'ahu. First serve is scheduled for 10 p.m. PT/7 p.m. HT.
The winner of Thursday's first round match will advance to Friday's Semifinal round where No. 2 seed Hawai'i awaits at 7 p.m. PT/10 p.m. HT. Thursday's other first round match features No. 4 seed UC San Diego taking No. 5 seed UC Santa Barbara which precedes the CSUN/UCI match at 7:30 p.m./4:30 p.m. HT. Top-seed Long Beach State will meet the winner of the UCSD/UCSB match in the second Semifinal match on Friday at 7:30 p.m. PDT/4:30 p.m. HT.
FOLLOW YOUR MATADORS ONLINE
All matches of the 2025 Outrigger Big West Men's Volleyball Championship can be viewed on ESPN+ on the mainland and through Spectrum Sports in Hawai'i.
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.
CSUN FINISHES REGULAR SEASON RANKED NINTH IN AVCA MEN'S VOLLEYBALL POLL
After concluding the regular season with a pair of losses to No. 4 UC Irvine last week, the Matadors (18-10) remained ninth for the fourth straight week in this week's AVCA National Collegiate Poll (Apr. 21). CSUN has been ranked a season-high seventh three times in 2025, its highest ranking since the Matadors also ranked seventh on Jan. 15, 2018. After receiving a season-high 302 points on Mar. 10, CSUN received 277 points in this week's poll. The Matadors, ranked in all 17 polls last season, have now been ranked in all 16 polls this season (7th three times, 8th, 9th four times, 10th, 12th, 13th, 15th three times, and 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 (26-2) remained the No. 1 team in this week's poll, collecting all 23 first-place votes and 460 total points. The top five remained unchanged as UCLA (20-5) remained second, followed by Hawai'i (24-5), UC Irvine (20-6), and USC (20-6). Loyola Chicago (23-3) remained sixth this week, followed in the top 10 by BYU (19-9), Pepperdine (17-9), the Matadors (18-10), and UC San Diego (17-11). The second half of this week's top-20 poll includes Grand Canyon (17-9), McKendree (20-7), Stanford (11-14), Lewis (22-8), Ohio State (17-10), Lincoln Memorial (24-1), UC Santa Barbara (12-15), Ball State (17-13), Princeton (14-10), and Mount Olive (19-3).
SCOUTING THE ANTEATERS
UC Irvine (20-6, 6-4 Big West), seeded third at this week's Big West Championship, capped the regular season with a pair of wins over the ninth-ranked Matadors last week. Five UC Irvine players earned All-Big West honors, including first-team selections Hilir Henno, Maxim Grigoriev and Nolan Flexen. Junior William D'Arcy garnered honorable mention accolades, while Micah Goss was a Big West All-Freshman team honoree. Henno is in elite company as only the second Big West player to be named to the first team all four years, joining Hawaii's Pat Gasman (2018-21).
All-time series: Thursday's first round match is the 82nd meeting all-time between the Matadors and UC Irvine. In the series that dates back to 1977, UCI holds a 44-37 edge in 81 previous matches. The Anteaters claimed both meetings this season to run their current win streak over CSUN to three. The two teams have met in the Big West Championship once in 2023 when the Anteaters defeated the Matadors in three sets (25-21, 25-22, 25-18) at the Bren Events Center.
THREE MATADORS NAMED ALL-BIG WEST
For the first time since 2018, CSUN Men's Volleyball had three student-athletes named to the First Team as The Big West 2025 Men's Volleyball All-Conference Team has been announced on the eve of The Hawaiian Islands presents the 2025 Outrigger Big West Men's Volleyball Championship. The Matadors had three first-team selections as senior Donovan Constable, redshirt sophomore Jalen Phillips, and freshman Stilian Delibosov were all named to the top team. The last time CSUN had three players named first team was 2018 when Eric Chance, Arvis Greene, Jr., and Dimitar Kalchev earned top honors. This season also marked the third consecutive campaign that the Matadors have had three players named to the All-Big West Team. CSUN, which has now had 26 players named All-Big West in eight seasons in the conference.
CONSTABLE CAREER ASSISTS WATCH
With the 56th of his career-high 62 assists at UC San Diego on Apr. 12, Constable moved into sixth place on the CSUN career assists list with 3,536. Constable moved past Gary Reznick who has 3,530 assists from 1990-94. Now with 3,609 career assists in 375 sets, Constable owns a 9.62 career assists per set average. Constable who played in his 100th career match against UCSB on Mar. 29, became just the seventh player in program history with 3,000 career assists with his 13th assist against Jessup on Feb. 14. The senior from Clovis has already passed Reznick (3,530), Travis Magorien (2,911) and Sam Porter (2,711) this season and has his sights set on Matt Stork who is fifth with 3,780.
Constable is one of four Matador setters in the program top-10 to play in the Rally Scoring era of collegiate volleyball. He also ranks fifth in CSUN's Rally Scoring era assists list, trailing Stork and fourth place by 171 assists.
CSUN CHAMPIONSHIP NOTESÂ
Thursday's Outrigger Big West Championship opener against UC Irvine marks the Matadors' 24th appearance in a postseason conference tournament since 1990. CSUN was the No. 5 seed in the most recent Outrigger Big West Championship in Honolulu in 2024, defeating No. 5 seed UC San Diego in straight sets in the Quarterfinals before falling to top-seed Long Beach State in the Semifinals. CSUN's only other win at the Big West Championship came over UC Santa Barbara (3-1) in the first round of the 2018 Big West Championship at Long Beach State's Walter Pyramid ... The victory over the Gauchos in 2019 was CSUN's first postseason victory since defeating BYU in the semifinals of the 2010 MPSF Tournament at Stanford. The Matadors were regular participants in the MPSF Tournament, earning a spot in the postseason each and every season from 2002- 2010. In all, CSUN has now qualified for the postseason tournament 24 times since 1990. Theo Edwards will coach his fourth Big West Championship match on Thursday. Edwards and the Matadors dropped a 3-0 decision in his debut season in 2023. CSUN finished 8-14 all-time in conference tournament matches under previous head coach Jeff Campbell, the Matadors reached the conference tournament championship match three times, most recently the MPSF Tournament Championship in 2010 ... Delibosov continues to lead the Big West in hitting percentage this week. The freshman is hitting .489 with 188 kills and just 30 hitting errors on 323 swings this season ... Lorenzo Bertozzi matched his career high with 17 kills against UC Irvine on senior night.
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 season record in 2025, the Matadors are now 18-52 (.257) in 70 Big West matches over seven-plus 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, 2024, and 2025, 2-8 in 2021 and 1-9 in both 2022 and 2023. 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 IN THIRD SEASON AS HEAD COACH
Theo Edwards is in 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 302 points to rank a season-high seventh on Mar. 10 this season. 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
If the Matadors defeat UC Irvine in the first round on Thursday, CSUN would advance to take on No. 2 seed Hawai'i on Friday at 10 p.m. PT./7 p.m. HT.Â
#GoMatadors
