Jan. 11, 2003
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Stanford University (2-2) finished in sixth place at the two-day E-Bar Invitational following a 33-31, 25-30, 30-27, 30-24 loss to Long Beach State (4-1) in the consolation final on Saturday afternoon at UC Santa Barbara.
"This match was a real battle," Stanford head coach Don Shaw said. "We made some mistakes at key times, especially when we had a chance to win the third game. The match could have gone either way."
Senior opposite Curt Toppel (Pacific Palisades, CA), who was named to the All-Tournament Team, led the Cardinal with 22 kills, while senior outside hitter William Strickland (Malibu, CA) and senior middle blocker Paul Bocage (Princeton, NJ) chipped in 11. Redshirt sophomore setter Kevin Hansen (Newport Beach, CA) finished the afternoon with 47 assists.
The Cardinal opened the tournament with a 3-1 first round loss to eventual champion UC Irvine on Friday night, and bounced back to defeat Pacific 3-1 on Saturday morning in the consolation semifinals.
"We had a chance to take a look at some of the other teams in the conference this weekend," Shaw said. "This was a strong tournament, and every team put their best lineup on the floor. After we started out slow against UC Irvine, we came back and played pretty well against Pacific."
The Cardinal returns home to open Mountain Pacific Sports Federation play against BYU on Friday and Saturday at 7:00 p.m. at Burnham Pavilion.