Long Beach swept SBCC 25-18, 25-14, 25-21 in Friday night’s regular-season finale to claim third place in the WSC men’s volleyball standings. The Vikings (13-5, 8-4) earned the third and final playoff berth in the conference.
The Vaqueros (12-7, 7-5) had swept the Vikings 3-0 on March 18 in Santa Barbara. SBCC finished fourth in the seven-team WSC race.
“Their setter did a nice job of getting the ball to their strongest hitters in good spots,” said coach Matt Jones. “We wanted to key on certain guys but we didn’t do a good job. They dug really well and extended a lot of rallies. That put pressure on us to sideout and we didn’t do that early in the match.”
Taylor McCluskey led the Vaqueros with seven kills and six digs. Sean Reynaert and Jaiden Pina had five kills each. Kyle Smiley had 13 assists and six digs and To’o To’o made four blocks.
SBCC’s 12 wins overall and seven in conference are the most in a decade.
“We improved on last year (going from 4-8 to 7-5 in WSC) but our goal was to make the playoffs,” said Jones. “We were just a couple points short of where we wanted to be.”
