No. 5/5 UC Irvine knocks off undefeated No. 1/1 Long Beach

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The dream of an undefeated season for No. 1/1 Long Beach State is over – courtesy of No. 5/5 UC Irvine.

UC Irvine committed a season-low four attack errors and hit .472 as it swept Long Beach State 27-25, 25-19, 25-19 on Friday in Long Beach, California.

Setter Joe Karlous guided the Anteaters’ offense to a more than .500 attack percentage in two of the three games. In addition, UC Irvine did not commit an attack error on the final 38 plays of the match to secure the sweep and beat the last remaining undefeated team in NCAA Division I-II men’s volleyball.

Pin-hitter William D’Arcy finished with a team-high nine kills and zero errors on a .692 attack percentage against the Beach. Outside attacker Hilir Henno added nine kills and hit .389 in front of a soldout road crowd of 4,676 people in attendance.

Henno also led the Anteaters with three aces, including an ace in the first-game overtime.

Freshman middle attacker Micah Goss contributed three aces as UC Irvine had eight aces and doubled Long Beach’s ace total.

Along with the serving performance, Goss teamed-up with pin-hitter Nolan Flexen to deliver the game-winning block in the first-game overtime. Goss ended the conference victory with three blocks, while Flexen led all players with five blocks.

Long Beach State in the loss was limited to a season-low .274 attack percentage. The Beach entered this match with a nation-best .407 attack percentage and had hit more than .300 in 11 consecutive matches.

Pin-hitter Skyler Varga finished with a match-high 13 kills on a .391 attack percentage. Varga was one of two Beach players to have both more than five kills and hit more than .100.

Long Beach State in the loss committed 22 service errors – nine more errors than UC Irvine.

Freshman setter Moni Nikolov opened the match with back-to-back aces and finished with a team-high three aces. Nikolov now has a program-record 78 aces this season and remains on pace to break the single-season aces record in NCAA Division I-II men’s volleyball during the 25-point rally scoring era.