Long Beach State University Athletics
Quotes from the MPSF Semifinal
4/24/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Volleyball
April 24, 2008
Long Beach, Calif. • April 24 & 26
Semifinals Game 1 - No. 5 Pepperdine defeated No. 1 Long Beach State, 3-0
Pepperdine
Head Coach Marv Dunphy
"I don't think we necessarily played a perfect match. I have seen Long Beach play a few times this year and they are really good. In the first game they didn't play as well as they are capable of. We kept our wits and played some good volleyball."
Regarding struggles during the season
"Throughout the year we weren't meeting our standards. The bottom line is you give it your best shot and either it is good enough or it's not."
Regarding the changes made in the first game to take the lead
"We made adjustments when receiving serves. We played in and served in to them to make them play us. It wasn't really anything magical."
"I thought Dean Bittner played real well. There was a stretch where we couldn't stop him."
Jonathan Walker
Regarding LBSU's service errors in game three "If they (LBSU) miss serves, then it is easy to sideout. They were serving tough and we hung in there and then they missed a few. I think we hung in on every aspect of the game tonight."
Regarding the youth on the team "They guys are young and we are coming together now."
Regarding the final stretch of the match "It was a good game. I think we only had one play where I had a bad set. It was them making good plays."
Long Beach State
Head Coach Alan Knipe >Regarding the first game
"I thought we got off to better start than I had anticipated. I thought it might take a little time to find our rhythm because of our long layoff but we came out very strong and then for some reason we just couldn't seem to get our serve over the net."
Regarding the service errors
"During the season we flat out won matches with our serve and had a number of matches where we finished with double digit aces. This is the strength of our team but it seemed to be contagious tonight."
Regarding why LBSU should be the at-large bid "There's a precedent setting case from two years ago when we swept UC Irvine in the semi's and they were number one seed and they still ended up representing the MPSF as the at-large team.
"When you look at our body of work and go down the criteria list of who gets in, then we should be in. We have the best case, we have the best record, and I feel confident that we will be playing at Irvine."
Paul Lotman
Regarding the effects of the first game loss on the rest of the match "We started out great but they just seemed to sweep the rug out from underneath us at the end of game one. It definitely carried over into game two and even into a little bit of game three before I felt we started to get back on track."
Regarding the service errors
"It was really frustrating for all the guys especially serving because we pride ourselves on our serving. It seemed to rub off everyone because we had missed serve after missed serve."
