Women's Volleyball Takes Central Coast Trip This Weekend

10/18/2016 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball

Friday, Oct. 21
Long Beach State at UC Santa Barbara
Time: 7 p.m.
Location: The Thunderdome (Santa Barbara, Calif.)
Listen | Gametracker | BigWest.TV

Saturday, Oct. 22
Long Beach State at Cal Poly
Time: 7 p.m.
Location: Mott Athletics Center (San Luis Obispo, Calif.)
Listen | Gametracker | BigWest.TV

LAST TIME OUT
• The Beach took care of business on Saturday night with a 25-14, 25-21, 25-15 sweep of visiting CSUN. It gave Long Beach its seventh straight victory, keeping the Beach alone in first place in the Big West.
• For the first time all season, someone other than Nele Barber led the 49ers in kills. That was junior Ashley Murray, who had a match-high 10 kills on .643 hitting.
• LBSU hit .425 as a team, its highest hitting percentage of the season. The Beach recorded 40 kills on 80 attacks, registering a season-low six hitting errors.
• Setter Missy Owens distributed the ball nicely, with five hitters recording six or more kills. The lowest hitting percentage for any player was .292 and Peyton Grahovac hit .750 on her eight swings. Owens had 33 assists and added 10 digs for her 11th double-double of the season.
• Sophomore Megan Kruidhof was added to the starting lineup at outside hitter, in place of Anete Brinke, and Kruidhof delivered with six hills (.333 hitting) and five digs in her third start of the campaign.

WE MEET AGAIN...
• Long Beach State will be looking to complete a season sweep of both UCSB and Cal Poly, after sweeping both teams in prior meetings this season.
• In the first matchup with the Gauchos on Oct. 1, LBSU had five players with seven or more kills, led by Nele Barber and YiZhi Xue with 12 apiece. It was a close match, by the Beach prevailed 28-26, 25-22, 25-18 to improve to 4-0 in conference play. Chanel Hoffman had a big night for the Gauchos, recording 19 kills (.341 hitting) and 11 digs.
• Against Cal Poly the night before, the Beach had one of its best blocking nights of the season, putting up 14 roofs in the 25-19, 25-22, 25-15 sweep. The Mustangs hit just .106 on the night, with one of their top targets, Raeann Greisen, hitting -.069.
• Nele Barber had 15 kills and nine digs with a .344 hitting percentage to pace the 49ers. Peyton Grahovac had a career-best six blocks and Anete Brinke recorded three of LBSU's six solo roofs in the match.

MURRAY & HARWARD CLAIM BIG WEST HONORS
• Following the wins over UC Riverside and No. 12 Hawai'i, the Beach had two players earn Big West weekly awards on Oct. 10, with junior Ashley Murray winning Big West Player of the Week and freshman Hailey Harward picking up Defensive Player of the Week.
• This was Murray's first career Player of the Week honor, after winning Defensive POW once and Freshman POW three times in 2014. Murray hit .385 in both matches last week, recording 13 kills at UCR and then a career-high 17 against Hawai'i. The middle blocker also led the team with seven total blocks on the week.
• Harward, meanwhile, had the best week of her young career, setting career highs in digs in both matches. She recorded 23 ups against the Highlanders, then topped that with 27 digs against Hawai'i, delivering a rare show-stopping performance from a libero. This is the first Big West award for Harward, who is the third straight LBSU freshman to win a Big West Defensive Player of the Week award, following Murray in 2014 and Mykah Wilson last season.

ARE YOU SAYING POW?
• For the second time this season, Nele Barber and YiZhi Xue earned weekly Big West awards on the same day. On Oct. 3, the conference announced that Barber was the Big West Player of the Week and Xue was the Big West Freshman of the Week.
• Barber is now a six-time Player of the Week in her season-and-a-half with the Beach. She is just the 12th player to win the honor that many times, still with another two months left in her college career.
• In the Cal Poly win, Barber was just one dig shy of a double-double with 15 kills and a .344 hitting percentage. All 15 of her kills came in the first two sets as she was hitting well over .500 heading to intermission.
• Xue had five blocks vs. Cal Poly, but it was her performance on Saturday against the Gauchos that really stood out. The freshman middle blocker recorded a career-high 12 kills against UCSB and hit a match-high .556.
• The duo also won weekly awards together on Sept. 12, with Xue winning Defensive Player of the Week instead. That was thanks to her 11-block performance against Duke, which still stands as the best blocking effort from any 49er this season. Barber, meanwhile, nearly had a triple-double in that match with Duke, finishing just one block shy of the rare feat.

FRESH START
• Conference play has signaled an improvement for Long Beach State, and just at the right time. The Beach has started off 7-0, including wins over the other top four teams in the Big West standings.
• LBSU ranks in the top three in the conference in digs/set (17.73), kills/set (14.35), assists/set (13.38) and hitting percentage (.271) during Big West play. Individually, Missy Owens is second in the conference in assists/set (11.65), YiZhi Xue is third in hitting percentage (.384), and Nele Barber is third in kills/set (4.00) and second in digs/set (4.62).

THE AWARD GOES TO...
• Following her monster weekend Sept. 8-10, senior Nele Barber was named the Big West and AVCA Player of the Week. It's the fifth Big West POW honor in Barber's two-year career at the Beach so far, and her first national award from the AVCA. Barber became the 11th player in program history to earn AVCA Player of the Week recognition and first since Bre Mackie in 2014.
• Barber averaged 4.39 kills, 2.94 digs and 1.06 blocks per set on the week, hitting .299 across four matches. She posted a pair of 20+ kill, 15+ dig performances on that Saturday, and hit a season-best .567 against LMU with no errors on 30 swings. Her most complete performance came against Duke, however, when she was just one block shy of a triple-double, finishing with 19 kills, 14 digs and a career-high nine blocks.

WATCH & LISTEN
• All of Long Beach State's non-televised home matches will be streamed live online and free of charge on BigWest.TV.
• Every LBSU match, home and away, can be heard live on KBeach Radio. Listen in at KBeach.org or via the free KBeach Radio app.
• There will be three LBSU women's volleyball home matches shown on ESPN3: vs. Cal Poly (Sept. 30), vs. UC Santa Barbara (Oct. 1), and vs. UC Davis (Oct. 29).