Pepperdine Is Right at Home

As the men’s volleyball coaches in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation gathered after last year’s conference tournament, Pepperdine’s Marv Dunphy planned on changes.

Dunphy didn’t foresee his Waves being the beneficiary in 2005. As the regular-season champion, Pepperdine will play host to the MPSF semifinals and championship match that will determine the league’s automatic entrant into next week’s NCAA Final Four at UCLA.

The top-seeded Waves (21-2) face Cal State Northridge tonight in one semifinal at Firestone Fieldhouse and Long Beach State takes on UC Santa Barbara. The winners advance to Saturday’s title match.

The MPSF adopted a proposal drawn up by Dunphy and the league’s other coaches to alter the tournament format, most significantly awarding the team that won the regular-season title the host site and a direct bye into the semifinals. Pepperdine edged second-place UCLA by two games in what is considered the nation’s toughest conference.

“Whoever played well during the year, we wanted to reward that team more than just giving them a home match” in the first round, Dunphy said. “There’s too many leagues in sports where the regular season has little or no meaning.”

In previous years, the top-seeded team would have had to play the eighth-seeded team in the quarterfinals. If that format were used, Pepperdine would have had to face Stanford, a team it defeated twice but needed four games to record each win.

Earning the bye took on added significance Saturday when three higher-seeded teams were upset in the quarterfinals. One of those teams was UCLA, which lost to Northridge (19-13) at home in five games.

“I would not consider those shocking,” Dunphy said. “They’re considered upsets only because the lower seed beat the higher seed.”

Long Beach (21-9) is angling for a return trip to the NCAA tournament after losing the national final to Brigham Young last season. The 49ers finished fifth in the MPSF but dealt Pepperdine one of its two losses and also defeated UCLA.

After a sluggish start, the 49ers have won 12 of their last 14 matches, but Santa Barbara (16-13) won two of the three meetings this season.