Add Island Doty in the setter mix. He has been on some of the national junior teams. Sani and Dani at the pins.
guess 5-7 years, but who knows.
Knipe has done well to help with a model/foundation to sustain success. of course, it's gonna take a coach that players will trust can help them develop for professional play to continue.
what's great about Knipe is he has never made it about him. he's always made it about Long Beach. he really has created a brand.
can't replicate Knipe's reputation though.
the 2021 team was 7-5, that was a tough year.
next year is going to be really interesting. UCLA loses a lot of key guys, Hawaii loses 4 really key guys, Beach loses 5 key guys, Grand Canyon loses their core guys, Irvine likely loses the POY and a couple key guys.
next year should be really a crap-shoot & wide open for contenders. UCLA does still return a lot.
we still return Varga, Siapanis, two monster MBs in McRaven and Bouchkov, plus get Nikolov's brother who is a setter. We'll be different, but also could be really really good again wiht those 4 weapons plus a couple guys who are good and hardly played this year, we've got a logjam of hungry liberos competing for that spot.
coached 21 years so far, 55 years old.
Ever since they expanded to 2 at large bids for the NCAAT (2014) he had lead LBSU to 7 out of 10 NCAAT semifinals or greater.
Has won it all twice, runner up twice, lost in the semi four times and this year is tbd.
My concerns are
-obviously will his replacement be as good? (probably not).
-is NIL going to creep into men's volleyball? I mean NIL is also taking over smaller sports. Heck Oklahoma basically has an all star softball team because of NIL. What if a power school or two starts dumping NIL money into men's volleyball. I could also see Hawaii dumping some NIL into men's volleyball and they try to make that one of their sports they have a chance to dominate. Don't get me wrong LBSU has been doing pretty good attendance wise BUT I am worried the second we throw in a couple of 12-12 type season our attendance numbers will fall off a cliff. It takes far longer to gain fans (that will actually buy tickets and go to games) than to lose them.
55
Message Thread
« Back to index