Irvine, Calif. – No. 15 UC Irvine kept its post-season hopes alive with a 3-0 sweep (25-17, 25-18, 25-23) of CSUN at the Bren Events Center Thursday.
With the win, UCI goes to 10-18 overall and 7-14 in the MPSF. With the sweep, UCI wins the tiebreaker with CSUN, but the Anteaters' postseason appearance still rides on a couple of outcomes. If UCI beats Long Beach on Saturday, Cal Baptist would have to lose one match at Hawaii. If UCI loses Saturday, it would need Hawaii to beat the Lancers twice this weekend to advance.
Junior Tamir Hershko led UCI with 14 kills, hitting .458 (14-3-24) and posting a team-high six digs. Opposite Michael Saeta hit .471 with 10 kills and two errors on 17 swings and recorded four aces and three total blocks. Junior Thomas Hodges added seven kills, four digs and three block assists, while Marty Ross led the team with five block assists. Dante Chakravorti totaled 32 set assists in the win.
The Anteaters out-hit (.400-.253), out-blocked 10-7, out-dug (19-13) and out-served (7-1) the Matadors.
CSUN was led by Dimitar Kalchev's 10 kills followed by Josiah Byers and Arvis Greene's eight. Byers also totaled a team-best four block assists.
UCI controlled the first set, hitting .632 (13-1-19) and winning 25-17. A kill by Jason Agopian and a kill and block by Tamir Hershko opened a 9-5 lead. Another Hershko kill was followed by an ace by Marty Ross and a kill by Thomas Hodges to help build the lead to 17-8. Saeta would put away the set winner.
After a kill by Agopian, Saeta would step to the service line and fire two aces as well as recording a kill to give UCI a 10-6 advantage. UCI would lead 20-9 on a kill by Dante Chakravorti and go on to a 25-18 victory. The Anteaters would record six blocks in the second set.
UCI would hold an early 9-6 lead in the third set, but the Matadors would catch them at 10-10 and take a 12-11 advantage on a block. A kill and ace by Saeta gave UCI the 21-20 lead. Each team would record a service error by their best servers, before Kyle Russell made his match debut with UCI leading 22-21 and promptly fired an ace, 23-21. The Matadors would tie the set 23-23 on back-to-back UCI ball handling and attack errors. Hershko would record a kill before a CSUN attack error would give UCI the 25-23 win and match sweep.
UCI will close out the regular season hosting Long Beach State at 7:00 p.m. at the Bren Center. A senior salute for Jason Agopian, Kyle Russell and Marty Ross will take place before the match.
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