Long Beach State Stuns Nebraska

The season is new and the rules are different. So is the pecking order in women’s volleyball. Long Beach State made sure of it, surprising top-ranked Nebraska, 26-30, 30-28, 31-29, 30-25, and ending the Cornhuskers’ 36-match winning streak in a nonconference match Saturday at the Pyramid in Long Beach.

Tayyiba Haneef and Cheryl Weaver each had 21 kills for Long Beach State, playing in front of 4,940, the third-largest crowd ever for a volleyball match at the Pyramid. It’s safe to say the 49ers (2-0) won’t be ranked No. 8 in the next coaches’ poll.

And the 49ers’ mark of 42 consecutive victories set in 1998 and 1999, the second most in history, will not fall this season. “We weren’t going to let that happen,” Long Beach State Coach Brian Gimmillaro said.

The effort was almost a necessity for the 49ers, who would just as soon forget two unimpressive firsts from last season--a loss to an unranked opponent (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo) for the first time since 1987 and a finish out of the top 10 for the first time since 1995.

Nebraska, on the other hand, went 34-0 last season and ended on an emotional note, first-year Coach John Cook guiding the Huskers to victory in the title match against Wisconsin, where he had coached the seven previous seasons.

With new rules in place, specifically point-per-serve scoring that mimics international rules, there was no doubt the season would start with a different twist. What wasn’t necessarily expected was Nebraska’s first loss since Dec. 9, 1999.

“We’ve still got a long ways to go,” Cook said. “Long Beach is ahead of us now. We weren’t trying to break the win streak this year or we wouldn’t have scheduled this match.”

Long Beach State fired first, Elisha Thomas drilling the final two kills for a one-game lead.

Nebraska (2-1) took a 23-14 lead in the second game and was almost caught at 29-28, but tied the match when 49er middle blocker Haneef was called for touching the net on a block attempt. Long Beach State rebounded in the third game, breaking away from a 29-29 tie on a service error by Anna Schrad and a kill by Weaver, her seventh.

Haneef had seven kills in the fourth game, including the match-winner on a cross-court shot. She also made a pitch for Long Beach State as the new No. 1 team.

“When that last ball went down, we knew no one was going to take this No. 1 spot from us,” she said. Weaver, a two-time All-American, had six kills in the fourth game.

Nebraska has plenty of Southland schools left on its schedule, including a match this afternoon against UC Santa Barbara at the Pyramid and matches against Pepperdine and UCLA next Friday and Sunday at Nebraska.

“We wanted to schedule tough because we think we can win a national championship,” Cook said. The only ranked team from the region that doesn’t play Nebraska might be the best of them all--No. 2 USC.