Long Beach State and Springfield still top their respective NCAA men’s indoors polls and USC is still No. 1 in NCAA beach.
There are two Tuesday-night matches in the MPSF, with the EIVA’s Princeton at BYU and Cal Baptist playing at Limestone of the Conference Carolinas.
Another EIVA team, Charleston, goes out of conference at Bluefield.
And there are two more matches in ConfCarolinas as Belmont Abbey goes to Lees-McRae and King plays at Pfeiffer.
This is the weekly Tuesday NCAA notebook. All the polls follow — men’s Division I-II, men’s Division III and women’s beach — plus some analysis and the POWs and notes.
NCAA men
AVCA Division I-II Poll: There were just two moves in the 15 places and not very much at that. The top seven stayed exactly in order, from No. 1 Long Beach State to No. 7 Lewis. Pepperdine and Stanford switched spots at 8 and 9, while No. 10 through 15 was exactly the same.
Click here for the AVCA poll
AVCA Division III Poll: There are 15 spots, normally. This week there are 16, with the top 14 being exactly the same as last week. The extra team? Unranked Dominican pulling into a 15th-place tie with Juniata. Springfield, 21-1, remains No. 1 and got all 17 first-place votes.
Click here for the full AVCA Division III poll
National POWs
AVCA Division I-II POW: BYU senior outside hitter Jake Langlois. In sweeps over Hawai’i Langlois averaged 4.17 kills, 1.5 blocks, 1.17 digs and .50 aces while hitting .391.
AVCA Division III National POW: Eastern Mennonite University junior outside hitter William Ragland. Ragland hit .373 and averaged 1.8 digs and 1.1 aces per set in a 3-0 week. That included 18 kills, eight digs and six aces in four sets against Juniata.
Men’s D-I-II
EIVA
Offensive Player of the Week: NJIT senior outside Jabarry Goodridge for the second straight week. He averaged 4.54 kills in a 4-0 week. That included 24 in a four-set win at Coker.
Defensive Player of the Week: Saint Francis senior outside hitter Tony Nicotra. He had eight blocks and five kills while hitting .364 in a win over Cal Baptist.
Key matches this week: Princeton has some tough road challenges, playing at BYU of the MPSF on Tuesday and Grand Canyon of the MIVA on Thursday. Non-conference matches on Friday include Penn State at Lewis of the MIVA and Saint Francis at the MIVA’s Loyola.
Last week’s key results: George Mason got swept at USC, while Harvard took the Trojans to five the next night.
Worth noting: Penn State leads in hitting percentage (.293) and blocks (2.46 per set), while Saint Francis leads in assists (11.86), opponent hitting percentage (.221), and kills (12.68).
Goodridge leads in hitting (.343), kills (4.48) and aces (0.52).
Click here for the EIVA standings
MIVA
Co-Offensive Players of the Week: Grand Canyon junior outside Cullen Mosher for the second straight week and Fort Wayne graduate-student outside hitter Nick Smalter. Mosher averaged 4.0 kills and hit .344 in two victories. Smalter averaged 3.88 kills and hit .383. That included 29 kills Saturday against Grand Canyon, most in the MIVA this season. In that same match, a five-set win for Gand Canyon, Mosher had 27 kills.
Defensive Player of the Week: Lewis freshman outside hitter Ryan Coenen. Coenen averaged 1.50 blocks and 1.13 digs per set.
Key matches this week: No. 11 Ball State plays at No. 2 Ohio State in a battle of ranked teams, but not what was expected before the season began since Ball State has fallen out of the race.
Last week’s key results: Ohio State beat both Chicago teams, Lewis and Loyola.
Worth noting: Wyatt Patterson of McKendree leads the league in hitting at .489. Miles Johnson leads in kills per set, 3.97, but teammate Nicolas Szerszen has one more total kill, 303.
Click here for the MIVA standings
MPSF
Player of the Week: See AVCA POW above.
Key matches this week: The big ones are first-place Long Beach State, one game up in the win column, going to second-place BYU on Friday and Saturday. UC Irvine is at Pepperdine on Saturday.
Last week’s key results: BYU’s back-to-back sweeps of Hawai’i and Pepperdine’s wins over CSUN and Stanford.
Worth noting: UCLA set the league season-high for aces with 13 against Harvard … 10 of the 15 AVCA poll places are taken by MPSF teams, while there are nine of 15 in the NCAA RPI rankings … Josh Tuaniga of Long Beach leads in assists with 841 total and 11.36 per set. Teammate Bryce Yould is hitting an even .500 lead to the MPSF.
Click here for the MPSF standings
Conference Carolinas
Player of the Week: Barton sophomore outside hitter Aleksa Brkovic. Brkovic averaged 3.38 kills and hit .589 in two wins to go with six aces and five digs.
Key matches this week: An interesting matchup looms for Limestone, which plays host to the MPSF’s Cal Baptist on Tuesday. Barton goes to George Mason of the EIVA on Friday. In league matches, league-leader Mount Olive goes to North Greenville on Friday and Limestone on Saturday.
Last week’s key results: King swept Quincy of the MIVA and Mount Olive won twice in the league, beating Emmanuel and Erskine.
Worth noting: Barton is hitting .341 as a team. Next closest is King at .266. King leads with 115 aces, while Barton has 112 and Mount Olive 104.
Click here for the ConfCarolinas standings
NCAA Beach
There was action Monday as No. 5 Hawai’i beat visiting Nebraska 4-1. UH improved to 12-2. It’s only losses were to No. 1 USC and No. 4 Florida State. At No. 1, Hawai’i’s Mikayla Tucker and Morgan Martin beat two Nebraska players indoors fans know well, Justine Wong-Orantes and Andie Malloy.
Also Monday, No. 12 Grand Canyon went to Pacific and scored a 5-0 sweep to improve to 11-3.
AVCA Collegiate Beach Poll: Not much news here. The top eight remain the same with no major movement after that. Unbeaten USC, the defending national champion, is No. 1 again. Florida Atlantic jumped in at No. 14, its first appearance ever. Eight teams that aren’t ranked got votes.
Click here for the entire AVCA Beach poll
Pac-12 top pair: USC’s Jenna Belton and Jo Kremer, who won seven matches last week and lost just one set.
Big West top pair: Hawaii’s No. 3 pair in Emily Maglio and Laurel Weaver earned the honor after going 4-1 during the Outrigger Hawai‘i Invitational.
CCSA top pair: Florida State’s Victoria Paranagua and Macy Jerger went 4-0 to be honored by the Coastal Collegiate Sports Association.
ASUN top pair: Stetson’s Kaylee Anderson and Emily Carroll took the Atlantic Sun honors. They went 4-0 and didn’t lose a set.
On the beach this week: No. 6 Long Beach State is home Tuesday for Concordia and Colorado-Mesa before playing host on Saturday to No. 3 UCLA and No. 14 Cal. USC plays at home on Wednesday when it entertains Loyola Marymount and then goes to South Carolina this weekend where it plays the No. 9 Gamecocks, Florida State, No. 9 Georgia State and No. 13 Stetson. And No. 2 Pepperdine is home for Colorado-Mesa and CSUN on Wednesday before playing host Friday to CSU Bakersfield and Cal Poly.
