49ers Open With Zero Problems

There was a lot of concern when the NCAA expanded its women’s volleyball tournament to 64 teams this year that the sport wasn’t quite ready for it.

Never was that point more apparent than Thursday night at the Pyramid, where top-ranked Long Beach State shut out visiting Southern in their opening-round match.

It took just 49 minutes--32 if you subtract four Southern timeouts and 13-mandated minutes of intermission--for the 49ers to hang a 15-0, 15-0, 15-0 loss on the 64th-seeded team, which was making its first playoff appearance.

Never before had a team failed to score a point in an NCAA playoff match and it was the fewest number of points allowed by Long Beach (31-0) since it swept UC Irvine, 15-2, 15-0, 15-3, Oct. 30.

Long Beach Coach Brian Gimmillaro, a strong critic of the NCAA for not expanding earlier, said that the waxing done by the 49ers will help the sport in the long run.

“This was good for volleyball,” Gimmillaro said. “It exposes others to the tournament who haven’t been here before. This allows other conferences to grow and put more resources into volleyball.”

The closest Southern (19-13), which had won 15 of its last 18 matches, got to scoring a point came in the third game. Long Beach, up 9-0 and with Gimmillaro substituting freely, mishandled a Lady Jaguar serve. Up referee Joan Powell raised her finger to signal the score for Southern and the crowd of 1,769 roared its approval.

But moments later down referee Steve Owens realized that Southern’s Nalinya Davis had served out of rotation. Long Beach was awarded the ball and the 49ers went on to close out the match, with former Katella defensive specialist Silvia Panak serving the final two points, including a wicked ace to the back line to end the match.

Former Laguna Hills standout Tayyiba Haneef drew the biggest applause when she came off the bench and recorded a left-side kill from setter Misty May, formerly of Newport Harbor, that gave Long Beach a 12-0 lead in the second game.

But all in all, the 49ers, who hit .615, didn’t have to work too hard. Southern hit a negative .143 and committed four service errors in only 10 attempts.

Southern Coach Nathaniel Denu chose not to speak to the media after the match and Long Beach players chose their words carefully. They were more interested in talking about tonight’s second-round matchup with No. 19 Arizona (22-6), which swept Fresno State (18-11). But after several cordial overtures toward Southern by players, May put her best spin on the victory.

“One down, five more to go,” she said.

In the regional at East Lansing, Mich., Pepperdine upset 14th-ranked Michigan State, 15-13, 13-15, 15-12, 13-15, 15-8, for its first NCAA tournament victory.

The Waves, winless in their previous 11 trips to the NCAA tournament, improved to 18-10 going into tonight’s match against North Carolina (29-7), a first-round winner over Oral Roberts.

Lindsay Phillips, the West Coast Conference freshman of the year from Marina High School, led Pepperdine with 20 kills. Senior Anna Witkowski had 19.