September 29, 2007

Women's volleyball: 49ers keep drama on hold
By Frank Burlison, Staff writer

LONG BEACH - The UC Irvine volleyball team seemed poised to takes its Big West Conference match with its Long Beach State counterpart to five games Saturday night in the Walter Pyramid.

Alexis Crimes and Talaya Whitfield obviously wanted no part of sticking around the building that long, however.

Crimes (17 kills and seven blocks) and Whitfield (24 digs) kept things from becoming too nerve-wracking for the heavily pro-Long Beach following in the crowd of 1,557, leading the 49ers to a 30-21, 30-26, 28-30, 30-23 victory.

After the Anteaters (12-5, 2-1) tied the score at 21 in Game 4, Crimes had a hand in scoring five of her team's final eight points as Long Beach jerked the momentum away from the visitors.

"She (Crimes) was very, very good at the end," LBSU coach Brian Gimmillaro said. "She certainly was the difference."

And Whitfield, still hobbled by a bum right knee that caused her to miss five matches earlier in the season, wrapped up an exceptional weekend of play after her 25-dig performance Friday night in the sweep of UC Riverside.

"Talaya Whitfield played great defense, although I'm not sure we did (as a team)," Gimmillaro said. "She is really only playing on one leg, but she has still looked better than anyone else (as a libero) I've seen this season."

Junior outside hitter Quincy Verdin added 17 kills for the 49ers, while freshman Ashley Lee had 12 kills and 13 digs.

In Game 1, Verdin had five kills, while Long Beach had a hitting percentage of .364 and UCI committed five service errors.

In Game 2, the 49ers fell behind 3-1 and still trailed, 11-10, when Gimmillaro called a timeout.

It seemed to settle them down and, after an Anteater was caught going into the net, Long Beach led, 23-18, and seemingly was cruising.

But the visitors, who knocked off host Cal State Northridge on Friday night in four games, scored the next five points to tie the score and coax Gimmillaro into calling another timeout.

Crimes got a kill after a Nicole Vargas set to put the hosts back in front before Lauren Kellerman and Chelsea Ellis combined for a block to tie the score at 24.

But Long Beach scored six of the final eight point errors, taking advantage of some Anteater hitting woes.

The 49ers looked like they were going to wrap things up quickly in Game 3 while bouncing to a 4-0 advantage before the visitors, behind Kari Pestolesi (21 kills) and Kellerman (16) began capitalizing on some of the defensive breakdowns Gimmillaro referred to.

With Cal Poly losing at Pacific, the 49ers, Cal Poly and Pacific hold 3-1 records and are technically tied for the conference lead with 2-0 Cal State Fullerton (which didn't play in conference action this weekend).