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UCLA Men's Volleyball: Bruins Claim Back-to-Back Titles After Taking Down Long Beach State

The Bruins are back on top!

Eva Geitheim

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

Back-to-back!

The UCLA men's volleyball team claimed its second consecutive national championship title after defeating Long Beach State on Saturday. The Bruins earned a 3-1 win at Long Beach to seal their second straight title.

The Bruins defeated No. 8 Fort Valley St. during the Quarterfinal round. They then defeated UC Irvine in the Semifinals of the tournament, before going on to win the championship.

Micah Wong Diallo put up 12 kills during the championship game while teammate Alex Knight had nine kills and five blocks. Ethan Champlin, Merrick McHenry, and Andrew Rowan were all named to the NCAA MVB All-Tournament Team. Champlin was named the tournament's most outstanding player.

While the Bruins came into the tournament as the No. 1 seed, they actually finished the season with a worse record than the runner-up and tournament's No. 2 seed, Long Beach State. UCLA finished with a 26-5 record, and Long Beach State ended with a 27-3 record.

This season UCLA faced more challenges than the year prior when they went 31-2 and defeated Hawai'i 3-1 to win the title.

This is the first time that the Bruins have gone back-to-back since the 1990s when they won two straight in 1995 and 1996. This is UCLA's 21st total men's volleyball championship title, making them by far the most dominant program in history.

UCLA's 21 championships is 16 more than the next school, Pepperdine, which has won five such titles. Even with their dominance, these back-to-back championships ended what was the Bruins' longest drought without a title from 2006 to 2023. UCLA had won at least four championships in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, before winning two in the 2000s and none in the 2010s. With two titles less than halfway through the 2020s, UCLA looks primed to

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Eva Geitheim
EVA GEITHEIM

Eva graduated from UCLA in 2023 with a bachelor's degree in Communication. She has been covering college and professional sports since 2022.