California State University at Northridge
UC San Diego
No. 9 CSUN Takes on No. 10 UC San Diego in Home-and-Home Series
4/9/2025 4:01:00 PM | Men's Volleyball
MATADORS THIS WEEK:
MATCH #25 (BIG WEST #7):
No. 10 UC San Diego Tritons (17-7, 3-3 Big West) @ No. 9 CSUN Matadors (16-8, 1-5 Big West)
Thursday, Apr. 10, 2025Â - 6:00Â p.m. PT
Premier America Credit Union Arena - Northridge, Calif.
ESPN+
Live Stats
MATCH #26Â (BIG WEST #8):
No. 9Â CSUN Matadors @Â No. 10 UC San Diego Tritons
Saturday, Apr. 12, 2025Â - 7:00Â p.m. PT
LionTree Arena - La Jolla, Calif.
ESPN+
Live Stats
In-game XÂ updates:Â @CSUNMensVB
CSUN Men's Volleyball Media Notes
FORÂ STARTERS
The No. 9 CSUN Men's Volleyball team (16-8, 1-5 Big West) opens its penultimate Big West series of the regular season on Thursday, welcoming No. 10 UC San Diego (17-7. 3-3 Big West) to Premier America Credit Union Arena at 6 p.m. The Matadors then close the two-match, home-and-home series on Saturday in La Jolla at 7 p.m.
CSUN picked up its first conference win of the 2025 season last Friday, sweeping No. 5 Hawai'i before falling to the Rainbow Warriors in straight sets on Saturday. Â
FOLLOW YOUR MATADORS ONLINE
Both matches this week will be streamed live on the ESPN+ platform. Darren Preston will have the call on Thursday. A majority of Matador home matches this season will be streamed live with Preston handling a majority of the play-by-play this season with CSUN women's volleyball head coach Aquiles Montoya joining as an analyst for select matches.
Fans can also follow CSUN Matador men's volleyball online 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 RANKED NINTH IN AVCA NATIONAL COLLEGIATE MEN'S VOLLEYBALL POLL
After dropping a pair of Big West matches to No. 18 UC Santa Barbara last week, the Matadors (15-7) slipped one spot to ninth in this week's AVCA National Collegiate Poll (Mar. 31). 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 262 points in this week's poll. The Matadors, ranked in all 17 polls last season, have now been ranked in all 13 polls this season (7th three times, 8th, 9th, 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 (21-1) remained the No. 1 team in this week's poll, collecting 21 of 23 first-place votes and 458 total points. The top five changed slightly as UCLA (16-3) remained second with two first-place votes and 437 points, followed by USC (18-2), UC Irvine (15-5), and Hawai'i (21-2). Loyola Chicago (19-2) remained sixth this week, followed in the top 10 by BYU (15-7), Pepperdine (14-6), Pepperdine (14-6), the Matadors (15-7), and UC San Diego (16-6). The second half of this week's top-20 poll includes McKendree (15-7), Stanford (9-10), Grand Canyon (14-8), Lewis (19-7), Ball State (17-9), UC Santa Barbara (11-10), Lewis (17-7), Lincoln Memorial (16-1), Ohio State (12-10), Princeton (9-9), and Mount Olive (18-2).
SCOUTING THIS WEEK'S OPPONENT
UC San Diego (17-7, 3-3 Big West), ranked 10th this week, split a pair of Big West matches against No. 4 UC Irvine last week. The Tritons upset the Anteaters in four sets at home behind 20 kills from Anthony Cherfan and 60 assists from Bryce Dvorak. Both players earned Big West weekly awards Monday as Cherfan was tabbed the Offensive Player of the Week and Dvorak picked up Setter of the Week accolades. UCSD, 5-6 on the road this season, is hitting .319 as a team which ranks fourth in the Big West just ahead of CSUN.
All-time series: Thursday's and Saturday's matches will be the 97th and 98th meetings all-time between the Matadors and UC San Diego. In the series that dates back to 1977, CSUN holds an 81-15 lead in the series. The Tritons claimed both regular season meetings last season before CSUN swept UCSD in the quarterfinals of the Outrigger Big West Championship in Hawai'i. The two teams also met in the first round of the Outrigger Big West Men's Volleyball Championship in 2021 with UCSD winning in four sets at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.
DELIBOSOV IS BIG WEST BLOCKS, HITTING % LEADER Â
Freshman Stilian Delibosov maintained his lead as the Big West leader in hitting percentage and also reclaimed the top spot in blocking this week. Delibosov is hitting .471 with 151 kills and just 27 hitting errors on 263 swings this season. UCI's William D'Arcy ranks second among Big West hitters at .397. The freshman from Bulgaria also has a team-high 96 total blocks through 82 sets this season, including 12 solo stuffs which moved him back into the conference lead at 1.17 blocks per set. Sophomore libero Chris Karnezis remained second in the Big West in digs per set at 1.86 while Donovan Constable and Jalen Phillips rank third in a host of categories this week. Phillips is third in kills per set and points per set while Constable is third in both assists and aces.
CONSTABLE CAREER ASSISTS WATCH
With 57 assists in two matches against Hawai'i last week, senior Donovan Constable increased his career assists total to 3,421 in 357 sets, a 9.58 career assists per set average. Constable played in his 100th career match against UCSB on Mar. 29. He 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 is now 109 assists away from sixth place on the all-time program list. Constable has already passed Travis Magorien (2,911) and Sam Porter (2,711) this season and has his sights set on Gary Reznick who has 3,530 assists from 1990-94. 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 Matt Stork and fourth place by 359 assists.
CSUN QUICK SETS
After reaching double figures in kills (10) against UC Santa Barbara on Mar. 28, freshman Joao Avila matched that total on a season-high .692 hitting in CSUN's 3-0 win over No. 5 Hawai'i on Friday. In the two matches, Avila posted 20 kills while hitting .531 on 32 attacks with five aces and nine digs ... After making an immediate impact in the UCSB series, junior middle blocker Shane Nhem cooled slightly in the series against Hawai'i. Nhem, who put down 19 kills on 28 swings to hit .607 with 14 blocks against UCSB, had eight kills on .353 hitting with five blocks against the Rainbow Warriors. Nhem did serve two of his three aces this season against Hawai'i ... With nine home wins in 2025, CSUN has already reached last season's home win total and with two home matches remaining, the Matadors can post their highest home wins total since 2009. The Matadors won 14 times at home in 2009 and also reached double figures in home wins in 2010 (11-3) and 2018 (10-3) ... With Friday's 3-0 win over the fifth-ranked Rainbow Warriors, CSUN improved to 6-8 this season against teams ranked in the AVCA Top-20.Â
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 1-5 record in 2025, the Matadors are now 16-50 (.242) in 66 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 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 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
Following Saturday's match against UCSD in La Jolla, the Matadors will close the 2025 regular season next week with home-and-home series' against No. 5 UC Irvine. CSUN travels to the Bren Center on Apr. 17 before hosting the Anteaters on Apr. 19. The 2025 Outrigger Big West Men's Volleyball Championship is on the horizon, taking place Apr. 24-26 at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.Â
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