NCAA volleyball: Catching up on beach and men’s polls, POWs, schedule

This report catches up on NCAA beach volleyball (read our story from last weekend’s UCLA Invitational here) and NCAA Division I-II men’s volleyball as both sports head into the final stretches of their respective regular seasons.

NCAA beach

AVCA BEACH POLL — There was some movement at the top after USC beat TCU, which had beaten UCLA twice.

USC moved up two spots to No. 1, TCU stayed No. 2, UCLA dropped two notches to No. 3, Florida State stayed No. 4, and LSU, now No. 5, traded places with Loyola Marymount. 

There were no major changes.

Click here for the complete AVCA Collegiate Beach Coaches Top 20 Poll.

AVCA BEACH POW — The top pair of the week is USC’s Tina Graudina and Hailey Harward. Graudina, the Latvian Olympian who is a senior, and Harward, a graduate student, went 4-0 this past weekend at No. 1. They beat teams from LSU, Hawai’i, TCU and FlU and are now 16-0 this season.

BEACH THIS WEEK — USC (19-1) has won 18 in a row. The Trojans join UCLA (21-2) at the PAC-12 North Invitational at Stanford where they will play No. 9 Stanford, No. 12 Cal, No. 17 Arizona and Oregon. 

UCLA plays Cal, Arizona State, Oregon and Washington. 

TCU (28-1) goes to No. 4 Florida State, where the Horned Frogs play No. 19 Stetson, No. 15 FIU, FSU, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, and LSU.

FSU (19-5) plays TAMUCC, LSU, TCU, FIU and Stetson. 

LSU (21-6) plays FIU, FSU, TCU and Stetson. 

Loyola Marymount (19-3) is at No. 8 Hawai’i, where the Lions plays twice each against No. 7 Grand Canyon and Hawai’i.

NCAA men

AVCA MEN’S POLL — The top four teams — UCLA, Long Beach State, Penn State and Hawai’i — stayed the same. UC Santa Barbara moved up a spot to No. 5, trading places with USC, which lost twice to UCLA.

Ball State and Pepperdine remained Nos. 7 and 8. No one dropped out of the top 15.

Click here to see the complete AVCA Men’s Division I-II Coaches Poll.

AVCA MEN’S POW — The AVCA kept its streak alive of naming a new player every time out. The national player of the week is Ball State right side Angelos Mandilaris. The Greek graduate student had 32 kills (5.33 kills/set) in sweeps of No. 15 McKendree and No. 13 Lewis last week, hit .333, and averaged 2.66 digs. 

Worth noting is Stanford’s Will Rottman. In two losses to then-No. 10 Grand Canyon last week, he had eight kills the first match and then 34 the next. 

MEN THIS WEEK — Thursday, top-ranked UCLA goes to No. 8 Pepperdine in the only MPSF match of the day. Friday, No. 6 USC is home for Concordia and BYU goes to No. 12 Stanford. Saturday, Pepperdine goes to UCLA, USC goes to Concordia, and BYU stays at Stanford.

In the Big West, No. 2 Long Beach State is home for No. 10 UC San Diego on Friday, No. 4 Hawai’i is home for No. 5 UC Santa Barbara, and No. 14 UC Irvine is at CSUN. On Saturday, Long Beach goes to UCSD and CSUN goes to UCI, while Hawai’i stays home for UCSB.

In the EIVA, No. 3 Penn State (20-3, 13-0), which has already clinched the regular-season title, is home for St. Francis Brooklyn on Friday and then NJIT on Saturday. NJIT (13-8, 8-4) and Harvard (10-10, 8-4) are tied for second, four games back in the loss column. NJIT is at Saint Francis (PA) on Friday, while Harvard is home for Charleston on Friday and Saturday.

The MIVA is a two-team race between No. 7 Ball State (19-2, 11-1) and Loyola Chicago (16-7, 10-2) and they play each other Thursday when the Cardinals go to the Windy City. Also in the MIVA on Thursday, No. 13 Lewis is home for Quincy and No. 15 McKendree is home for Lindenwood. On Saturday, Ball State goes to Purdue Fort Wayne, Loyola is home for Ohio State, Lewis entertains Lindenwood and McKendree plays host to Quincy.

It’s a three-team race in Conference Carolinas where North Greenville (17-5, 11-1) holds a half-game lead over Mount Olive (13-5, 10-2) and King (15-11, 9-3) is right behind. Mount Olive goes to Lees-McRae on Friday and King on Saturday. North Greenville plays at Emmanuel on Saturday, and King is home for Barton on Friday. 

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