Home Title Would Be Sweetest for Long Beach

Before UCLA won the 1994-95 men’s basketball title, then-coach Jim Harrick had posted a picture of the site of the championship game, the Kingdome in Seattle, in the team’s locker room for motivation.

At Long Beach State, the 49er men’s volleyball team needs only to walk to the north end of the campus to conjure visions of the ultimate goal.

Could Long Beach win the NCAA championship on its home floor at the Pyramid, the site of this year’s final four?

“The thing you don’t get when you’re away at a championships is, the community is behind you,” said Alan Knipe, the 49ers’ first-year coach. “It’s the-hometown-boys-win story. Not only the parents or friends, but even the fans who aren’t into volleyball but want to see Long Beach win.”

Knipe is in a great situation. The former associate coach has succeeded Ray Ratelle, who retired after 19 successful years, during which the 49ers won the 1991 NCAA championship. They were ranked No. 1 and had won their first seven matches before losing in three games Saturday at Pacific.

Knipe has been in the program eight years, first as an All-American hitter from 1990-92 and then five years as an assistant. He has the 49ers playing a more aggressive style but moving one chair over didn’t mean messing with the formula for success.

“If I was to come from an outside program or if it was my first year at Long Beach State, then it might be a big difference for the players,” he said. “I didn’t come in here with a different agenda that I have to be completely different than Coach Ratelle.

“This has been a tremendously successful program for years and I came in with the attitude that if it’s not broke, I’m not going to try to fix it.”

Seniors David McKienzie and Matt Prosser have been the 49ers’ leaders, but another key to the strong start has been senior outside hitter Jim Polster.

“He often gets overlooked for All-American-type stuff,” Knipe said. “Jim is really the glue to our team. He does a lot of the things that don’t show up in the stat column that make a team go.”

Going undefeated wasn’t the 49ers’ goal. That may be impossible for any team now, considering the number of quality teams in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation.

The top eight ranked teams in the nation are in the conference, and Pacific isn’t one of them.

“We have a lot of respect for the teams in our league,” Knipe said. “We know on any given night, someone can lose.

“Up at Pacific, it kind of exposed the fact that the guys kind of got away with some things against the teams that we played.”

He hopes it was a lesson learned. On Monday, Knipe didn’t order any extra drills in practice. The 49ers watched film and ran their normal schemes.

Maybe, he’s still enjoying his new role.

“I would be lying if I said I’m not fortunate,” he said. “I’m a young head coach at a powerhouse volleyball school, the school I went to in the city I live in. It’s the perfect situation and I owe a lot to Coach Ratelle, bringing me here.”

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Al Scates became the first college volleyball coach to reach 1,000 victories Saturday night when UCLA defeated Pepperdine, 25-30, 32-30, 30-28, 30-26, before 2,567 at Firestone Fieldhouse.

Scates has a record of 1,000-162 in his 39th season. The Bruins, 5-3 overall and 1-1 in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, were led by senior Adam Naeve, who had a school-record 10 service aces, and junior Ian Burnham, who had a match-high 16 kills.

“It’s a tribute to all the great players we’ve had at UCLA,” Scates said afterward. “Several of them were here tonight, and it means a lot to me. I will remember this forever.”

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Pepperdine’s Ipek Senoglu and Paola Palencia reached the women’s doubles final of the National Intercollegiate Indoor Tennis Championships, losing to Laura Granville and Gabriela Lastra of Stanford, 6-2, 6-3, Saturday at suburban Dallas.

The duo became only the second team in NCAA history to reach the finals in the first three legs of the ITA Grand Slam, having played in the title match at the National Clay Court Championships and Riviera All-American Championships.

In singles play, Senoglu eliminated USC’s Jewel Peterson in the second round before losing to Duke’s Ansley Cargill in the quarterfinals. Sara Walker of UCLA won a second-round match against Florida’s Jessica Lehnhoff before falling in the quarterfinals.

On the men’s side, Jean-Julien Rojer of UCLA lost in the consolation finals to Georgia’s Bo Hodge. Rojer and Jean-Noel Grinda did team up to win the consolation doubles over Rodrigo Echagaray and Eleazar Magellan of Kansas, 6-7 (3), 6-4, 6-3.

COLLEGE DIVISION

Despite a game-high 24 points from Quincy Stinson, the Cal State L.A. men’s basketball team suffered a damaging 59-58 home loss to Cal State Bakersfield on Saturday night, dropping the Golden Eagles (11-8, 9-5) into a fourth-place tie with UC Davis in the California Collegiate Athletic Assn.

Bakersfield (14-5, 11-3) is alone in second place, two games behind league-leading Cal State San Bernardino. Cal Poly Pomona (14-5, 10-4) won twice last weekend and pulled into third.

Pomona-Pitzer will host the World TeamTennis National Small College Tennis Championships, with opening-round play in two sessions at 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday.

The tournament, which has NCAA Division II, III and NAIA teams competing, ends with the semifinals Sunday at 8:30 a.m. and the final at 1 p.m. Azusa Pacific and Pomona-Pitzer are the two local teams among 16 participating.

Azusa Pacific exacted revenge against Biola with a 77-74 men’s basketball road victory and held onto a one-game lead in the Golden State Athletic Conference over Christian Heritage. A key was Anthony Haggins, who’d missed the Cougars’ 78-67 loss to Biola on Jan. 4. He scored 13 points and blocked a potential game-tying shot with three seconds remaining.