NCAA men’s volleyball: Daemen upsets UCSB; Princeton thumps Pepperdine

Unranked Daemen of the NEC upset No. 12 UC Santa Barbara, the second time the young program has beaten a ranked team in its six-year existence. 

Tenth-ranked Pepperdine was swept by No. 16 Princeton.

There were no other upsets Friday as No. 1 Long Beach State and No. 2 Grand Canyon stayed unbeaten, No. 3 Hawai’i won easily, No. 5 UCLA bounced back against No. 7 UC Irvine and No. 8 Penn State rolled on.

The recaps and top performances follow, but first a look at Saturday’s NCAA Division I-II men’s volleyball schedule that includes three Big West teams in action as CSUN is back at Stanford, UCSB is back at the EIVA’s Harvard here it plays the home team, and Long Beach is home for King again.

Also in the MPSF, Grand Canyon goes to the NEC’s Daemen, Pepperdine tries to bounce back when it stays in New Jersey and goes to the NEC’s FDU.

There is one MIVA conference match when Queens goes to Quincy. The MIVA’s Penn State heads to Purdue Fort Wayne and McKendree is home for independent Missouri S&T.

The EIVA’s Charleston is home for Central State of the SIAC. Two other SIAC teams are in action when Kentucky State plays Warren Wilson and Benedict plays twice, against Truett-McConnell and Milligan.

The NEC’s Merrimack is at independent Dominican. Another independent, Lincoln Memorial, plays Emmanuel of Conference Carolinas, and the ECC’s Roberts Wesleyan is at Houghton and St. Thomas Aquinas plays host to Russell Sage.

If a match is being shown, we have the viewing link in our VolleyballMag TV & Streaming Listings.

Daemen (3-1) of the NEC came away with a 25-20, 28-26, 22-25, 19-25, 16-14 victory over UC Santa Barbara (3-7) of the Big West in a match played at Harvard. The Wildcats, who hit .212 and had three aces and 21 serving errors, built a 10-5 fifth-set lead. But UCSB rallied to tie it at 12. Daemen had two match points before closing it out on a block by Cameron Milligan and Ondrej Arabasz. Milligan led with 17 kills, hit .333, had an assist, six digs and one other blocks. Billy Weiberg had 12 kills, an ace, 11 digs and four blocks, one solo. Arabasz had 10 kills with two errors in 16 attacks, five blocks and a dig. Sean Califf had two kills, 48 assists,  six blocks and 14 digs. UCSB’s Rees Barnett — who had 27 total kills in 2023 — had 23 kills but no aces and six errors to go with a block and four digs. Ben Coordt had 12 kills,…