NCAA volleyball: CUI upsets GCU, San Jose hires a coach, women’s rules changes

Concordia upset No. 8 Grand Canyon in the MPSF, No. 5 Lewis kept on rolling in the MIVA, San Jose State hired a women’s coach, and the NCAA approved some women’s rules proposals.

The news and recaps follow, but first a look at Friday’s NCAA Division I-II men’s schedule.

There’s a full slate in the EIVA as No. 11 Princeton is home for Sacred Heart, No. 10 Penn State plays host to No. 15 George Mason, Harvard is at NJIT and Charleston is at Saint Francis.

There are two MPSF-Big West matches as No. 12 UCLA goes to CSUN and Grand Canyon plays at No. 7 UC Irvine. Sixth-ranked UC San Diego of the Big West is home for UC Santa Cruz.

In the MIVA, Ohio State is at Quincy and Ball State goes to Lindenwood.

There are two Conference Carolinas league matches as King plays at Mount Olive and Lees-McRae goes to Barton. Also, North Greenville is home for Bluefield College.

To watch any match that is being streamed or broadcast, go to the VolleyballMag.com TV listings.

Men’s recaps: Raymond Barsemian had 25 kills as Concordia (8-10, 2-4 MPSF) dealt a tough 25-23, 23-25, 25-23, 25-22 loss to visiting Grand Canyon (12-4,4-2).

CUI, which upset UC Irvine in its last match on Tuesday, saw Barsemian hit .417 and have two blocks and seven digs. Jordan Hoppe had 18 kills, hit .500, and had two aces, a block and six digs. Noah Lassandro had seven kills, also hit .500, and had a dig and three blocks, one solo. McLain Mott had a kill, 59 assists, a block and four digs as his team hit .338 and had two aces and 26 errors.

“The opportunity to beat UCI and then beat the second-place team in the conference shows that we are right there with the top teams in the nation,” CUI coach Shawn Patchell said. “The boys are believing in each other and we’re going in the right direction.”

David Kisiel led GCU with 16 kills. He had two blocks and six digs. Christian Janke had 12 kills and hit .385 but he had no aces and seven serving errors to go with a block and eight digs. Kyle Thompson had nine kills, hit .462, and had an ace, two blocks and three digs. Ian McClain had eight kills with no errors, an ace, and five blocks. 

Second-ranked BYU leads the MPSF at 5-0. GCU is now two games back, Pepperdine is a half game back at 3-2, and Stanford and UCLA are tied at 2-3 …

Lewis (12-4, 5-1 MIVA) won 25-17, 25-20, 25-17 at No. 14 Purdue Fort Wayne (8-5, 3-3) as Ryan Coenen led a balanced attack with 10 kills. He had four assists, three blocks and four digs. Tyler Mitchem had nine kills and hit .615 to go with seven blocks, and Kyle Bugee had seven kills, hit .429, and added an assist, an ace, four blocks and four digs. Kevin Kauling had three kills in four errorless tries, 23 assists, five digs and six blocks, one solo. His team his .348 and had three aces and 17 errors. 

Pelegrin Vargas led PFW with 10 kills but hit minus .031. The Mastodons hit .012 and had one ace and 12 errors …

Nicolo Mancin had 18 kills and Barton of Conference Carolinas (11-2) won its seventh in a row, 25-14, 25-15, 26-28, 20-25, 15-12 over visiting St. Francis Brooklyn (3-6).

Mancin added an assist, an ace, four digs and four blocks. Angelos Mandilaris had 11 kills, hit .389, and had two aces and three digs, and Absalon Williams had 10 kills, hit .500, and had a dig and three blocks. Barton hit .281 and had six aces and 24 errors.

St. Francis hit .122 and had two aces and 10 errors. Dominick Pikura led with 10 kills, an assist, four digs and two blocks, one solo.

Loyola (6-10), 3-3 MIVA) beat visiting McKendree (9-7, 3-3) 25-13, 25-22, 22-25, 25-15 as Cole Schlothauer had 22 kills and his team hit .407.

Schlothauer hit .462 after having four errors in 39 attacks. He added an assist, two blocks and four digs. Devin Joslyn had 10 kills, an assist, an ace, 12 digs and two blocks, one solo. Kyle Piekarski, who hit .571, and Jake Maffett had nine kills each. Piekarski also had five blocks, while Maffett had two of his team’s six aces. Loyola had 19 errors. Ian Cowen had a kill, 44 assists, six blocks and six digs.

“I thought it was a really good team win,” Loyola coach Mark Hulse said. “We killed a ton of volleyballs tonight. That’s been tricky for us. That was probably the most collective effort we’ve had all year and we hit .400 as a result of it. I thought we set a nice bar for what we’re trying to do.”

McKendree hit .174 and had three aces and 12 errors. Ethan Carroll led with 13 kills, two of those aces, a block and three digs. Zach Schnittker and Patrick Ross had 10 kills each … 

San Jose hires Kersten: Trent Kersten, a TCU assistant the past five years and a former UCLA player, is the new San Jose State coach. He inherits a program that finished 10-19 last season, 5-13 in the Mountain West. San Jose State has not been to the NCAA Tournament since 2001

NCAA rules: The NCAA approved an option to add a third referee to conduct all video challenge reviews in women’s volleyball, beginning in the 2020 season. While the news release is about that, it also included a few items about replay, including combining decisions regarding in/out/touch, net and antenna faults into one challengeable action. This allows the referee to call the first fault seen on the review; allowing coaches to challenge any play when the decision is based on whether a player touched the ball, including back-row attacks and illegal blocks, or whether a player illegally reached over the net; and allowing either coach to challenge a fault that occurred before a replay.

In the previous news release, when the rules changes were proposed, Kentucky coach Craig Skinner, the rules committee chair, said, “The committee felt this rule can help streamline the challenge review system in two ways. First, it can cut down on the time it takes to do the review challenge, and secondly, it allows the first referee and second referee to focus on their jobs. They don’t have to spend time and energy on the technology aspect of the game.”

Skinner added that coaches in his league liked the optics of having a third person not involved in the original call to review coach’s challenges.

“In football, the SEC goes to the conference office for the video reviews,” Skinner said. “The NFL does that, too. It helps that there is another unbiased opinion on the result of the call.”

Click here for NCAA news release that confirmed the changes.

Beach Friday: There are a handful of NCAA beach volleyball matches preceding a busy weekend, including the TCU Horned Frogs Challenge that includes No. 15 TCU, Nebraska, Texas A&M-Kingsville and Abilene Christian; and the Stetson Spring Fling, that includes No. 7 Stetson, No. 16 Georgia State, and No. 18 Florida Atlantic.

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