After a Friday in which Hawai’i beat UC Irvine, Clarke Godbold had 32 kills as Long Beach State had to pull off a reverse sweep to beat CSUN, Stanford upset Grand Canyon and Princeton knocked off Charleston, Saturday sets up as the most pivotal day of the NCAA Division I-II season with key matches in the Big West, MPSF, MIVA and EIVA.
Conference titles, tournament seeding and possible NCAA at-large berths are all at stake as the regular season winds down.
A day after top-ranked Hawai’i beat visiting No. 5 UC Irvine to create a three-way tie for first-place in the Big West, the same teams go at it again in Honolulu. Also Saturday, No. 4 Long Beach, tied now with UH and UCI at 6-1, plays host to No. 15 CSUN, five games back.
In the MPSF, No. 2 UCLA, which has already won the league’s regular-season title, goes across town to No. 12 USC. Concordia Irvine goes to Pepperdine two days after upsetting the No. 8 Waves. And No. 6 Grand Canyon is at No. 9 Stanford. Stanford (5-4) trails idle and second-place BYU by a game in the win column and GCU (6-5) and Pepperdine (4-5) are right behind.
In the MIVA, where No. 10 Loyola Chicago (11-2) holds a one-game lead over No. 12 Ball State and No. 13 Ohio State, Saturday is big. Loyola goes to Ohio State, while Ball State plays host to fourth-place Purdue Fort Wayne.
Third-ranked Penn State, which now holds a two-game lead over No. 14 Charleston in the EIVA, is back at George Mason. Charleston, swept at home Friday by Princeton, plays host to the Tigers again. Princeton trails Charleston by a game in the loss column.
Also on the schedule are four NEC matches, including first-place Daemen home for Merrimack. Daemen holds a one-game lead over LIU and Saint Francis (PA), and those teams play each other at SFU.
If a match is being shown, we have the viewing link in our VolleyballMag.com TV & Streaming Listings.
Hawai’i (23-2, 6-1 Big West) hit .451 and held a 10-3 blocks advantage to came away with a 25-16, 17-25, 25-23, 25-22 victory over visiting UC Irvine (16-7, 6-1). Dimitrios Mouchlias went off for 23 kills as the the Rainbow Warriors beat UCI for the 12th time in a row. He hit .452 after having four errors in 42 attacks and added three digs and six blocks, three solo.
Spyros Chakas had 14 kills with one error in 31 attacks to hit .419 and had an assist, three aces, three blocks and three digs. Cole Hogland had six…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Volleyballmag.com…