Long Beach State men's volleyball falls to Hawai'i in NCAA semifinals
LOS ANGELES - The third-seeded Long Beach State men's volleyball team saw its bid for a second consecutive national title come to an end on Saturday night, falling to second-seeded Hawai'i in four sets (15-25, 25-18, 21-25, 22-25) in an NCAA semifinal at Pauley Pavilion.
"Everybody's going to feel it," first-year LBSU head coach Nick McRae told reporters. "It is all about how you respond to the moment, but it's OK to feel it in live time, because it means you put your blood, sweat, and tears and your soul into it, striving to go for it. All 17 guys have gone through it."
The Rainbow Warriors (29-5) will play unseeded UC Irvine (21-8), which beat fourth-seeded Ball State (26-5) in the championship game on Monday at 4 p.m.
Skyler Varga led LBSU (25-5) with 13 kills and hit .290. Wojciech Gajek had 11 kills and Sage Hill High product Jackson Cryst had a team-high four blocks. LBSU hit .200 as a team, its lowest hitting percentage since a .193 showing in a loss to UCLA on Feb. 6.
Four Warriors reached double digits in kills in Kristian Titriyski (14), Louis Sakanoko (12) and Adrien Roure (10). Justin Todd registered 10 blocks. Hawai'i out-blocked Long Beach State 14.5 to 6.
It was the fourth time that the Big West Conference powers squared off this season, most recently in the Big West Tournament final when LBSU outlasted Hawai'i in five sets for the title.
Long Beach both hit and served uncharacteristically poorly in the first set on Saturday, finishing with a .120 hitting percentage to go with nine service errors. Hawai'i walked away with a 25-15 win on a block by Roure and Todd.
LBSU had a first-round bye in the tournament before sweeping unseeded Loyola Chicago in a regional final at the Pyramid – their home court. Getting up to play a Hawai'i team that had beaten them twice on their home court this season wasn't a challenge, McRae said, due to the intense all-around competition in men's volleyball right now.
"Everybody that was in the tournament was ranked nationally, so it was a great competition," he said. "The beauty in our sport is every single weekend we're playing a top-20 team. Anybody can win. It's a dogfight. Guys are duking it out in really good volleyball games."
The second set was a dramatic turnaround, and LBSU led for nearly the entirety of the frame to put it away 25-18 on a Hawai'i service error.
Former Mira Costa High standout Tread Rosenthal jumped up for a solo block to cut Long Beach's lead to 10-9 early on. The teams traded service errors, then Connor Bloom's kill from the left side gave Long Beach a 13-11 that it could build on.
LBSU improved its hitting percentage to .273 by the end of the second set, and Varga, a first-team All-American, had upped his kill total to seven. But what gave Long Beach its final push was a call reversal that came when head coach Nick MacRae challenged a ruling on a Bloom kill.
The reversal gave LBSU a 21-18 lead and carried the team to the win.
Hawai'i resumed its dominance in the latter half of the third set. The score was knotted at 15-all when Long Beach committed a service error and allowed the Warriors to gain a lead they didn't relinquish.
Hawai'i scored in bunches, while unforced errors hurt Long Beach. Cryst and Gajeck had back-to-back kills to close the gap to 24-21, but the Warriors closed out the set on LBSU's 15th service error of the match.
Cryst, a 6-foot-10 freshman middle blocker, started off the fourth set with back-to-back service aces. He's one of 10 underclassmen on the team who have gained valuable experience in the postseason.
"That's the poetry of NCAA sports, it's those first-time guys who had not been in the moment," McRae said. "You're trying to expedite the lessons learned from (upperclassmen) that are staying in that moment again and again. And if these (upperclassmen) are going through that moment, we're going to have full trust in these guys that are going through it for the first time."
The rivals went point-for-point in the final set until Titriyski and Todd combined for a block that brought the score to 23-21 in Hawai'i's favor. A kill by Roure set up match point, and Titriyski delivered the final scoring strike to send his team to the final.
LBSU was making its ninth semifinal appearance in the last 10 years and, heading into this year's tournament, had reached the championship match in five of the past seven tournaments.
Hawai'i is in the final for the fourth time in the past six years, having won the 2021 and 2022 titles before losing to UCLA in the 2023 title match.
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This story was originally published May 9, 2026 at 11:29 PM.