BYU Cougars left on volleyball's Final Four doorstep

PROVO — BYU's 2008 volleyball season officially ended Sunday morning when Long Beach State — and not the Cougars — was selected as the at-large invitee to fill out the bracket for this week's NCAA Final Four.

Pepperdine, Penn State and Ohio State earned automatic Final Four berths Saturday by winning their respective league tournaments — the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association and the Midwest Intercollegiate Volleyball Association.

And so, the Final Four quartet — according to last week's CBS C/AVCA Top 15 national coaches poll — is comprised by top-ranked Penn State, second-ranked Long Beach State, fifth-ranked Pepperdine and ninth-ranked Ohio State.

Likely a key factor in the NCAA selection committee's decision to take Long Beach State over BYU was the fact that the 49ers swept BYU in their regular-season series, claiming both matches played in Long Beach last month.

"On paper, we met all the criteria to be the at-large team," said BYU interim coach Shawn Patchell, adding that head-to-head results "was only one of the five criteria. ... I felt we had it — it was a little frustrating."

The third-ranked Cougars failed to take NCAA matters into their own hands in Saturday night's MPSF Tournament championship match, with the automatic berth on the line.

Seeded second in the tourney, BYU took a commanding lead in the finals by winning the first two sets in the best-of-five-sets match, played at Long Beach State's Walter Pyramid.

But No. 5 seed Pepperdine — which had upset No. 4 UCLA and top-seeded Long Beach State previously in the MPSF playoffs — rallied to win the tournament and the Final Four berth by beating BYU in the final three sets of the championship match.

"We had a chance to win it outright," said Patchell. "We had a swing at the MPSF championship, and the ball didn't go down. ... You should never put it in the hands of a committee to vote."

So, Saturday's title-match loss was not only the final game of the '08 season for the Cougars, it marked the end of collegiate careers of five seniors — outside hitter Ivan Perez, middle blockers Russell Holmes and Trent Sorensen, opposite Jonathan Charette and setter Brian Congelliere. All but Congelliere were full-time starters, and he was a part-time starter throughout the year, sharing setting duties with Yamil Perez and Reed Chilton.

That means the Cougars will be without four of their top hitting arms going into next season.