UCLA Beach Volleyball Advances to NCAA Semifinals vs. Florida State

The Bruins topped UC Berkeley, 3-1, early this morning and will now face the Florida State Seminoles.

Joe Piechowski

May 6, 2023

Peri Brennan (5), Abby Van Winkle (21) and the rest of the beach volleyball team are looking to bring home NC #122. (Photo Credit: Elijah Carr/uclabruins.com)

There are three sports seasons at UCLA. There’s football season. There’s basketball season. Then, there’s championship season. That’s the season we’re in right now. Of course, sometimes, basketball season starts off championship season, but it’s currently volleyball championship weekend with the NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship taking place all weekend and the NCAA Men’s Volleyball Championship Game being played this afternoon.

Early this morning, the UCLA beach volleyball team easily defeated the UC Berkeley Golden Bears, 3-1, to advance to the semifinals, which was scheduled for 11 am PT. However, as I write this, Florida State just finished their quarterfinal matchup, beating LSU, 3-0, meaning that the TCU-Stanford quarterfinal hasn’t begun yet. So, expect the semifinals to start later than planned, possibly much later. In fact, ESPN2 is now projecting an 11:30 am PT start time for the first semifinal, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the match start closer to noon PT.

The Bruins are led by senior Lexy Denaburg and graduate Abby Van Winkle. Against the Seminoles, look for Denaburg to be on court one and probably paired with freshman Maggie Boyd while Van Winkle will likely be paired with junior Peri Brennan.

In this morning’s match, UCLA fell behind early when UC Berkeley’s Maya Gessner and Gia Fisher defeated UCLA’s Haley Hallgren and Rileigh Powers, 21-14, 21-16. But from there, it was all Bruins. Devon Newberry and Jadon Whitmarsh swept Berkeley’s Brooke Buchner and Alex Young, 21-19, 21-13, on Court 5. A few minutes later, Bruins Marlie Monserez and Jess Smith finished a sweep of UC Berkeley’s Lexi McKeown and Ella Driebholz, 21-19, 21-18, to give UCLA a 2-1 lead.

That left the Bruins needing to win just one of the two remaining flights. On Court 1, UCLA’s Lexy Denaburg and Maggie Boyd needed three sets to beat Sierra Caffo and Liz Waters, 21-19, 16-21, 15-10. That, of course, stopped play on Court 2 where Abby Van Winkle and Peri Brennan were up 10-5 in their third set against Ainsley Radell and Ashley Delgado after splitting the first two sets, 19-21, 21-18.

Florida State is one of just three teams to have beaten the Bruins this season, though the teams split a pair of meetings this season. UCLA won the first matchup in Gulf Shores, Alabama where today’s match will be played. However, the Seminoles won the rematch in Manhattan Beach.

The other two teams who beat UCLA this season remain in the tournament as well. That would be Pac-12 rivals #3 seed Southern Cal and #10 seed Stanford. While these rivals have each beaten the Bruins once, it’s worth noting that UCLA leads the season series against Southern Cal, 3-1, and against Stanford, 4-1. The Cardinal takes on #2 seed TCU shortly and the Trojans will face #6 Loyola Marymount after the TCU-Stanford match. But those teams are in the bottom half of the bracket. So, UCLA won’t face either team until the Championship Match if the Bruins and either the Trojans or Cardinal win their matches this afternoon.

Of course, the NCAA Men’s Volleyball Championship will be determined first and, with the Bruins facing Hawai’i this afternoon, it’s possible that UCLA could increase the school’s NCAA title total to 122 this weekend.

NCAA Beach Volleyball National Semifinal #1

Teams: #1 seed UCLA Bruins (39-3) vs. #4 seed Florida State Seminoles (31-8)
Scheduled Time: Saturday, May 6, 2023, 11:30 am PT
Where: Gulf Beach Place, Gulf Shores, AL
TV: ESPN2
Live Stream: WatchESPN.com and the ESPN app

Official Championship Preview

Go Bruins!!! Bring home that Natty!

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