Pepperdine, ranked ninth, had to rally to beat No. 14 CSUN in five in an MPSF match in NCAA men’s volleyball on Wednesday.
But another MPSF team, No. 15 UC Santa Barbara, lost a non-conference match in four to visiting Concordia.
In the MIVA, there are two league matches as No. 2 Ohio State goes to No. 10 Loyola and McKendree plays at No. 7 Lewis. Quincy plays a non-conference match at Lincoln Memorial.
The MPSF is off Thursday but Friday’s slate includes No. 4 Hawai’i at No. 3 BYU in back-to-back matches.
The EIVA is off until Friday with three non-conference matches. Conference Carolinas is also off Thursday but has a full slate Friday.
NCAA beach action Thursday includes the Long Beach Invitational that has No. 6 Beach, No. 2 Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount. In Hawai’i, the No. 5 Sandbows have the Outrigger Invitational that starts Friday and includes No. 1 USC, No. 2 Florida State, No. 7 Arizona, Nebraska and Utah.
Pepperdine wins, UCSB upset: The visiting Waves beat CSUN 22-25, 25-16, 21-25, 25-21, 15-12. Pepperdine improved to 7-9 overall, 5-8 in the MPSF, while dropping Northridge to 12-11, 5-9.
The fifth set was tied 12-12 before getting back-to-back kills from David Wieczorek and a Matadors hitting error to close it out. Wieczorek led the Waves with 23 kills and hit .487. He also had four digs, two aces and four blocks. Noah Dyer added 13 kills and hit .360 and had seven digs.
CSUN got 21 kills from Arvis Greene, who hit .310, and 20 kills from Dimitar Kalchev. Greene had eight digs, four blocks and two of his team’s 17 service errors. Kalchev had seven digs, five blocks — two solo — two of his team’s three aces and three errors.
Concordia beat Santa Barbara 25-22, 25-17, 15-25, 29-27. It left the Gauchos 10-2, while Concordia improved to 17-7.
Hunter Howell hit .583 with eight kills on 12 swings with one error. He added eight blocks and two digs. Jonathan Predney led with 15 kills and he had six blocks and six digs.
UCSB got 14 kills from Roy McFarland and 12 from Keenan Sanders, who hit .455 and had four blocks. Neither team had an ace, but Concordia had eight errors and the Gauchos nine.
