The NCAA championship trophy won by the Ohio State men’s volleyball team on Saturday will always serve as a tangible reminder of what the Buckeyes achieved.
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Half the finals are set.
Fourth-seeded UCLA (21-7) knocked off third-seeded Pepperdine (20-5), eliminating the Waves with a hard-fought 3-2 win in the contender’s bracket of the 2016 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship on Saturday afternoon at Gulf Place Beach.
A pair of kills and an ace from Sander helped BYU (27-4) take a 6-5 lead against Ohio State (31-3) to start the first set. Vanessa Freire and Sierra Sanchez overcame a 21-19 loss in the first set to UCLA’s Izzy Carey and Elise Zappia to clinch the match with 21-15 and 15-11 victories. But the Buckeyes are for real. They were absolutely the better team tonight.
“Hats off to Ohio State”, BYU coach Shawn Olmstead said. “They’re a quality team that’s riding some real nice momentum right now”. “We have always valued our longstanding relationship with Connor Sport Court and the outstanding service they provide to the NCAA”. The Buckeyes have won 22 straight matches.
However, the players won’t need to see that trophy in a glass case years from now to remember what led the team to a second national title in six seasons. “Its maybe arrived a little bit earlier than we thought”.
“We didn’t believe there was a team out there that could handle the kind of servers that we had”, Hanson said.
The Bruins took three of four matches against the SandBows this season. If the dual goes to a conclusion we likely drop the contest 3-2 today. “If you look past those things and just say, ‘Hey, deal with the ball and play the ball, ‘ we’re going to be okay”. They pushed our players. “I feel, when I’m setting, there’s no real weaknesses”. UCLA will square off against No. 1 see Florida State on Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m. PT/9:30 a.m. MT, and the victor will advance to the National Championship to face USC.
USC has a chance to match a feat the school’s indoor volleyball team completed in 1980 and ’81. “I think that’s what brought us together and got us through those set points and game points”. More than 54,000 student-athletes experience the pinnacle of intercollegiate athletics by competing in NCAA championships each year.
A national championship just wasn’t in the cards for Florida State on Sunday as the Seminoles were defeated by USC, 3-0, in the title match. A total of 3,683 fans were reported for the finals between Ohio State and UC Santa Barbara two nights later. But before he could do so, a BYU fan on the front row interfered, which nullified the entire play and reset the point.
“Yeah, whoever is doing marketing or social media for BYU needs a pat on the back because I mean Mormons, or BYU fans, flock to nowhere”, BYU sophomore setter Leo Durkin said.
“We’re not just teammates”.
This year’s semifinal totals, however, were an increase from last season’s results at Stanford (1,685). “It worked out perfectly”.
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“It’s been 10 years since UCLA has been on this run”, the junior said. “There’s not much strategy in that play”.
