Death Volley Invitational: LSU stuns USC, but then UCLA sweeps Tigers to go 4-0
LSU’s Ellie Shank goes all out against UCLA/LSU photo
BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — As the sun set Saturday on the Death Volley Invitational, LSU coach Russell Brock considered the ups and downs his LSU beach volleyball team had experienced the previous two days.
The Tigers lost twice Friday, getting swept by No. 3 Stanford before losing 4-1 to No. 6 Cal.
And then Saturday, in a most unlikely upset, the No. 10 Sandy Tigs came away with a 3-2 victory over top-ranked USC, which hadn’t lost since February 24 during the first weekend of the NCAA season.
But then, in this what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world of sports, No. 2 UCLA put a punctuation mark on its weekend with a 5-0 sweep of LSU.
The weekend tally:
UCLA, likely to move up to No. 1 in this week’s AVCA coaches poll, and Stanford went 4-0.
USC went 3-1. Cal went 2-2, No. 4 TCU, No. 5 Florida State and LSU each went 1-3 and No. 17 Florida Atlantic finished 0-4.
It marked the strongest collection of ranked teams ever in an in-season college beach tournament and was streamed internationally on Volleyball World TV.
“First, I think the event was unreal,” Brock said. “When we built this place (the on-campus LSU Beach Volleyball Stadium) this is the kind of stuff we wanted to show off and show off our sport and show off this facility and invite the best teams in the country to come and play. I don’t think it could have gone better.”
“What a fabulous tournament,” USC coach Dain Blanton echoed.
Indeed, not only was the weather perfect, the event ran on time and the teams left here with a pretty good handle on themselves and the top of the college game with five weeks until the National Collegiate Beach Volleyball Championship in Gulf Shores, Alabama, May 3-5.
“Would we have rather pulled out a couple on that first day and gone 3-1? Absolutely. Would we rather have pulled off that UCLA match? Absolutely. But these are good teams,” Brock said.
“So if you don’t earn it, you’re not going to get it. But I think we made steps from a lineup perspective and we’re still not done. We still have work to do but we’re better than we were when we walked in here on Friday and started playing. That’s all you can really ask for.”
To Brock’s point, LSU toed a fine line between winning and losing in all of its matches.
Against Stanford, it lost on courts 1 and 2 in 3 sets. Against USC, the No. 1 pair of Gabi Bailey and Elli Shank lost in three and on the three courts it won — No. 2 Parker Bracken and Reilly Allred, No. 3 Aubrey O’Gorman and Ella Larkin and No. 4 Amber Haynes and Skylar Martin — all won in three. That included O’Gorman and Larkin beating the USC Nourse twins, Audrey and Nicole, 21-19, 17-21, 19-17.
USC bounced back by beating Florida State in four, which included a gritty and exhausting 21-17, 17-21, 25-23 victory by the Nourses over FSU indoor star Audrey Koenig and Raelyn White.
“You learn a lot more when you lose, you know what I mean?” USC’s Blanton said. “We were rolling and I don’t think we’d lost in 40 days. Sometimes you learn these lessons when you lose. But let’s give the credit to LSU. They played really well.”
Ella Larkin sets LSU teammate Aubrey O’Gorman against USC/LSU photo
In LSU’s finale against UCLA, the Bruins won in three at No. 3 as Kenzie Brower and Jessie Smith beat O’Gorman and Larkin 21-14, 20-22, 15-10, and at No. 4 when Tessa Van Winkle and Jaden Whitmarsh topped Haynes and Martin 21-16, 11-21, 15-12. And even at No. 1, it was fierce battle as Lexy Denaburg and Maggie Boyd came away with a 25-23, 21-18 victory over Bailey and Shank.
“We knew coming in here there would be a lot of tough competition and we knew everyone would give us their best game,” said first-year UCLA coach Jenny Johnson Jordan. “Which they did.”
Jordan, the former UCLA indoor great and 2000 beach Olympian, credited her team’s consistency and balance. She was a longtime assistant to Stein Metzger, who left last year to take over the fledgling program at Texas.
Her assistants are both new, sort of. Brazilian icon Jose Loiola was a volunteer at UCLA in 2021. And Kelly Reeves, who won an indoor title at UCLA in 2011 before going pro on the beach, had been a volunteer assistant at Loyola Marymount.
“Obviously every year is different. We have new coaches, new dynamics, a lot of change and you never know exactly how it’s going to work out, but my mantra is always going to be that change is good,” Jordan said. “And it’s been good for us. We’ve figured things out in terms of partnerships and coaching and our growth as a program. I could not be happier. The only way I could be happier is if we finish No. 1 at the the end.”
UCLA has done that twice, winning it all in 2018 and 2019. The Bruins were a strong favorite in 2020 when the season was canceled midway through because of COVID. UCLA lost to three-time champion USC in last year’s title match.
And about being a likely No. 1 this week?
“I don’t care about that,” Jordan said. “I want to be No. 1 at the end. That’s what matters.”
That was a familiar refrain at a tournament that included last week’s top 6 teams in AVCA poll, along with No. 10 and No. 17.
And they all get after it again next weekend. USC (21-3), UCLA (19-4), Stanford (18-2) and Cal (15-7) go to Seattle for the Pac-12 North Invitational. LSU (13-8) goes to a tournament at Georgia State, FSU (20-5) is at home, and TCU (19-5) has its own tournament that includes Texas and Hawai’i. FAU (12-11) is at Florida State.
“I do not envy the (NCAA) selection committee,” Brock said. “Not just the selections, but also the seeding. It’s gonna be crazy. That’s why we feel in the next three weekends before we get to (the CCSA Championship April 26-27) we’ve got to have a really good showing.”
***
Here links to the respective stories and complete results from all eight schools that participated in the Death Volley Invitational, a play off the LSU football stadium, known as Death Valley:
USC, which swept TCU and FAU on Friday, lost to LSU and beat FSU on Saturday.
UCLA, which beat FSU and TCU on Friday, beat FAU and LSU on Saturday.
Stanford, which beat FAU and LSU on Friday, came away with 3-2 victories Saturday over both TCU and FSU.
Cal lost to Florida State and beat LSU on Friday before beating FAU and losing to TCU on Saturday.
TCU was swept by both USC and UCLA on Friday before losing 3-2 to Stanford on Saturday and beating Cal 3-2.
LSU lost to Stanford and Cal on Friday and then beat USC before losing to UCLA on Saturday.
Florida State lost to UCLA and beat Cal on Friday before losing to Stanford and USC on Saturday.
Florida Atlantic was swept by Stanford and USC on Friday and lost 4-1 Saturday to both Cal and UCLA.
LSU’s Aubrey O’Gorman hits against USC’s Audrey Nourse/LSU photo
The post Death Volley Invitational: LSU stuns USC, but then UCLA sweeps Tigers to go 4-0 appeared first on Volleyballmag.com.
Read More Volleyballmag.com NCAA Beach