The Ohio State men started what we presume will be a new streak.
USC’s Kelly Claes and Sara Hughes continued theirs.
Hawai’i is the place to be Friday, with school’s indoor men playing a huge match and the women’s beach team the hosts for a big tournament.
Start with Friday’s NCAA men’s Division I-II action.
In the MPSF, there are five matches involving league teams, two within the conference when No. 4 Hawai’i plays host to No. 3 BYU. BYU (17-2 overall, 11-1 MPSF) is in second place, two games in the win column behind Long Beach State. Hawai’i, 20-2 overall, is a game back of BYU at 10-2.
And in the other conference match, top-ranked Long Beach (19-2, 13-1) goes to up-and-down CSUN (12-11, 5-9), which is fighting to get into the eight-team MPSF postseason tournament. The Matadors are tied with UCSB for eighth place, a game back of Pepperdine in the standings.
Also in the MPSF, Cal Baptist (3-16) plays at No. 13 Penn State (12-7) of the EIVA, No. 6 UCLA (13-7) entertains the EIVA’s Sacred Heart (5-2) and UC San Diego (6-15) gets a crack at independent Concordia (17-7), which beat UCSB in five on Wednesday. Concordia has won eight in a row and 11 of 12.
There is one EIVA match with fourth—place NJIT (11-7) going to last-place Charleston (0-7).
In the MIVA there is one conference match with sixth-place Fort Wayne (5-15, 2-6) at third-place Grand Canyon (12-8, 8-4), while Quincy faces Belmont Abbey of Conference Carolinas.
Speaking of which, ConfCarolinas has a busy day. Second-place King (19-2, 9-1) first plays Belmont Abbey (4-12, 3-8). first-place Mount Olive (12-6, 10-1) is at Emmanuel (5-13, 3-8) and Barton (12-4, 10-2) goes to Erskine (3-12, 3-8). Also, Pfeiffer (0-1) goes out of conference to __play host to Southern Virginia.
Ohio State, Lewis win in MIVA: The Buckeyes bounced back in a big way, beating the No. 10 Ramblers 25-20, 25-21, 25-15 to improve to 20-1, 9-0 in the MIVA. Loyola dropped to 11-8, 6-4.
Ohio State, which won 42 in a row before losing to UC Irvine last time out, hit .352 as Miles Johnson led with 14 kills and hit .458. Nicolas Szerszen added 10 kills and hit .381. Dan Guessous had seven kills, hit .455, and had seven blocks, one solo. Johnson added seven digs and four blocks.
Ben Plaisted led Loyola with 10 kills but hit .069 and his team hit .153. Loyola had one ace and 15 service errors.
No. 7 Lewis improved to 17-5, 10-2 with a 27-25, 25-21, 25-13 sweep of visiting McKendree (7-15, 2-7). Mitch Perinar had 11 kills and hit .296.
Busy beach: No. 1 USC escaped with a 3-2 victory Thursday over No. 2 Florida State in Honolulu after earlier sweeping Nebraska.
The USC pair of Claes and Hughes won twice and extended their streak to 79 matches. They beat FSU’s Leigh Andrew and Brooke Kuhlman 21-14, 21-15. USC is 6-0, while the Seminoles dropped to 4-3.
In Hawai’i’s Outrigger Invitational on Friday, USC plays Nebraska again and Pac-12 beach newcomer Utah. Also in the tournament is No. 7 Arizona.
No. 2 Pepperdine beat the host team, No. 6 Long Beach State, 3-2 and swept Loyola Marymount. Long Beach also swept LMU.
LSU is the host for the Tiger Beach Challenge that includes No. 8 LSU, No. 10 South Carolina, Florida International, Tulane and North Florida.
No. 3 UCLA is in the Monterey Invitational that includes No. 13 Grand Canyon, Portland, San Jose State and Saint Mary’s.
No. 12 Stetson is the host for a tourney that includes No. 8 Georgia State, Jacksonville State, Florida Atlantic, New Mexico, Lincoln Memorial and Morehead State.
