25-20, 20-25, 21-25, 25-18, 15-11

Good news, a road win.

Bad news, CSUN was down some key players.

Good news, a sense of urgency in sets 4 and 5.

Bad news, Daniil started and was awful for about 3 sets, then was key in the final two sets with aces and kills.

Good news, Varga was unstoppable at times

Bad news, Varga was stoppable too often

Good news, the block came alive late

Bad news, it was nowhere for a while

You get the picture. Beach is struggling to find a team sense of purpose is my macro assessment. Like hey we won the championship last year, UCLA is a 80% probability to win it this year, no pressure on us...but then we get killed by Hawaii who thinks they can challenge UCLA, and barely win on the road against a good but not great CSUN team.

Cryst is becoming a consistent weapon, hence he keeps starting. Preuitt started tonight over Marquardt who has been struggling, and Preuitt did ok but Braun is back from injury and came in on fire, he usually is too mellow...and Ben was a big reason Beach lit the fuse of urgency and pulled this one out.

Kandev is struggling, can't tell if its a nagging injury or not connecting enough with Pazanti, but he got hot in the 4th set especially, so its there, just not happening enough. Bloom substituted in for a while and was solid.

Gajek didn't play, wouldn't surprise me if they are resting him a bit after the cramps he experienced v Hawaii, and to get Daniil some regular reps. Over on volleytalk where rumors fly like crows, that Gajek is already talking to a professional team in France for next year. MacRae has lots of issues to consider with PT, not an easy first year to be thrust into.

Pazanti was uber predictable at times again, and at times mixed it up very nicely. He's a bit stiff with his setting approach, but when he's on his sets target well. He needs to always mix it up, good example he had a good pass left of center of the net, instead of the easy quick set to Kandev, he back set Daniil who had a wide open lane and only one CSUN blocker got anywhere near it, boooom for the kill. Jake was getting the middles involved a lot which is good, and we ran back row attacks more than we have in a while. Gotta keep that up!

For CSUN, jr. Jalen Phillips is one of the best attackers in the country, he had 21 kills. Hank Kaufman had a career night apparently with 13 kills and few errors, hit .591.

Big match tonight if we can win at the Pyramid, even our conference record at 2-2. Would like to see us get 6 wins, meaning after this weekend, assuming we beat CSUN tonight, we'd have to go 4-2 v UCI, UCSB, UCSD. Doable. Would set us up better for the BWT in Irvine, where Hawaii will be favored, UCI 2nd favored, but any team gets really connected and hot they can win it.