No. 2 Long Beach State Punches Ticket To Final Four With Sweep Of No. 9 Loyola Chicago

Saturday, May 2

Long Beach, Calif.

6 p.m.

Long Beach State University

25-4,8-2Big West

Long Beach State vs. Loyola Chicago

21-9,12-4MIVA

Team	1	2	3	Final F
Loyola Chicago	21	21	19	0
Long Beach St.	25	25	25	3

No. 2 Long Beach State Punches Ticket To Final Four With Sweep Of No. 9 Loyola Chicago

5/2/2026 9:03:00 PM | Men's Volleyball

Box Score

Elite serving pressure and clutch late-set runs fuel a commanding 25-21, 25-21, 25-19 victory at the LBS Financial Credit Union Pyramid

By: Chelsea Pfohl, Assistant Athletics Director, Communications

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- No. 2 Long Beach State punched its ticket to the Final Four with authority, sweeping No. 9 Loyola Chicago 25-21, 25-21, 25-19 inside the LBS Financial Credit Union Pyramid in a match that blended early-set turbulence with increasingly controlled, high-efficiency volleyball.

Set one unfolded as the only phase where Loyola Chicago seriously disrupted Long Beach's rhythm, and even then, it required both chaos and precision. The match opened with Skyler Varga asserting himself immediately at 1-0, and the early stretch suggested Long Beach might run away, building a 4-1 cushion behind transition offense and a triple block from Wojciech Gajek, Connor Bloom, and Ben Braun. A Loyola challenge flipped a point, tightening the margin.

From there, the set became a sequence of micro-runs. Varga kept applying terminal pressure, including back-to-back kills to maintain separation, but Loyola's offense through Aleksandar Sosa and Josh Schellinger stabilized their sideout game. The first major inflection came at 10-10, the first tie, and shortly after Loyola grabbed its first lead at 11-12, then extended to 11-13. That stretch exposed Long Beach's only real vulnerability of the night: brief lapses in first-ball sideout.

What followed defined the match. Bloom delivered consecutive out-of-system kills to halt momentum, and the block reasserted itself with another triple rejection to tie at 13-13. From that point on, every Loyola push was answered immediately. Varga erased a deficitsat 19-19, and then Long Beach executed its cleanest closing sequence of the set. A Gajek termination pushed the score to 21-19, Bloom converted in-system for 24-21, and Jackson Cryst ended it with a service ace. Despite 11 tie scores in the set, Long Beach hit .480 and sided out at 72 percent, a clear indicator that even in a "tight" set, their offensive efficiency never dipped.

Set two was a structural shift rather than a continuation. The opening exchanges were balanced, but once Long Beach found their serving rhythm, the set tilted decisively. Varga sparked it with an ace at 5-4, and Cryst followed with a serving run that fundamentally broke Loyola's reception pattern. Back-to-back Cryst aces extended the lead to 9-5, and from there, Long Beach dictated tempo.

This set highlighted the distribution balance in Long Beach's offense. Bloom was effective in-system and with tempo variation, including a well-placed tip at 13-9, while Gajek added pressure from the right side. More importantly, Loyola's error rate climbed under serving pressure. Long Beach created separation not just through kills but by forcing out-of-system swings and capitalizing on them. By 18-12, the margin reflected control rather than volatility.

Closing the set was clinical. Varga tooled the block to reach set point at 24-18 and then finished with a controlled tip. Even though the official box score records the final as 25-21, the flow was much more lopsided, with Long Beach hitting .333 while holding Loyola to extended out-of-system sequences and zero team blocks in the set.
Set three briefly mirrored the first in competitiveness but never reached the same level of instability. Loyola stayed within striking distance early, trading points up to 14-14, with Sosa continuing to produce and Loyola finding occasional seams in transition. But the difference this time was Long Beach's composure in the middle third.

At 16-15, a Loyola service error handed Long Beach the lead, but Loyola immediately responded with an ace to go up 17-18. That was the final moment of real pressure. Long Beach responded with a clean sideout, then executed the decisive sequence of the match. A block by Cryst and Gajek flipped momentum, Pazanti followed with a service ace to create separation at 20-18, and Loyola began to unravel. Errors accumulated, including a net violation after an extended rally at 22-19.

From there, Long Beach closed emphatically. Varga delivered the final blow with a service ace at 25-19, sealing the sweep and punctuating a performance that became increasingly dominant as the match progressed.

Long Beach hit .369 as a team on 84 swings, nearly identical to Loyola's .371, but the separation came in serve pressure, reception quality, and error distribution . Long Beach produced 8 service aces compared to just 1 from Loyola, and more importantly, those aces came in high-leverage runs that created multi-point separation. Their sideout efficiency climbed as the match progressed, peaking at 75 percent in the third set, which eliminated extended scoring runs by Loyola.

Individually, Varga was the clear offensive anchor, finishing with 14 kills on .520 hitting while also contributing from the service line with a pair of aces. Bloom added 12 kills at .435, providing both in-system reliability and out-of-system scoring when the offense broke down. Gajek's line, 9 kills with involvement in multiple key blocks, underscored his impact beyond raw hitting percentage. Pazanti orchestrated the offense efficiently with 36 assists and a .554 assist rate, keeping distribution balanced and unpredictable.

Defensively, Kellen Larson anchored the backcourt with 20 digs, a career record, enabling Long Beach to sustain transition opportunities, particularly in the turning points late in sets one and three. At the net, while Loyola actually recorded more total blocks, Long Beach's blocks came at higher-leverage moments, especially during momentum swings.

When it was over, there wasn't much to debate. The serving runs opened things up, the offense stayed in rhythm, and every time a set got tight, they made the next play. A straight-set win, a trip to the Final Four, and a team that looks more and more locked in when it matters most.