....two weeks ago at about 7:25 pm at Cal Poly, the program hit absolute rock bottom.

Joy had just been let go, can understand the pyschological difficultly faced for the players and Sabrina to deal with the situation.

had lost to Bakersfield, again. the first set vs. Poly was an absolute disaster, all LB errors, Kash as horrid, magnified at that point in time by her retreating beyond the end line only to not get out of the way of a Poly serve with the ignomy of getting hit by the ball while retreating for a Poly ace. Lovett was absolutely stinking it up.

and then like a light bulb went on. They finished out that first set strong, they lost but it was an even well played match.

then demolished Fullerton, put up a better fight with Hawaii

this stretch has cleaner play, cleaner passes, consistent pressure on their opponent, more machine like

Kash isn't the focal point, the team is, Kash was used more sparingly this weekend, with Nelson having some of her best play


and last night the best serving match of the year. Lovett was back and not flailing serves into the net or long. The type of serving that wins matches. Yes, SB didn't look good, aside from getting a rhythm that 3rd set where they looked like the first place team SB had been. But aside from that, LB thoroughly dominated the other 3 sets.

Now, it's only a few weeks, and winning makes it seemingly looked more focused, The sideline doesn't have that look of despair any more, even when things don't go well. They have yet to win a match on the road, so we'll see about that over the next two weeks.

the De La Cruz setting rotation, with Tia as attacker finally played with the precision that makes De La Cruz a good complement to Tia's skills

Tia had perhaps her best match as setter and attacker - that combo and Lovett's resurgance were key reasons we got SB out of sync

but at least for now, nice to see a return of some Long Beach swagger out there

it was good to see, so kudos for the job Sabrina has done in this situation, and great for the team to get rewarded and knock UCSB virtually out of any chance for a NCAA bid