Waves Seeded #4 for NCAA Beach Volleyball Championships
4/28/2019 5:00:00 PM | Women's Beach Volleyball
MALIBU, Calif. – The #6 Pepperdine beach volleyball earned the #4 seed for the upcoming NCAA Beach Volleyball Championships, to be played from May 3-5 in Gulf Shores, Ala., as released by the NCAA Women's Beach Volleyball Committee on Sunday afternoon.
In the opening round, the Waves will take on #4-ranked and #5-seeded LSU on Friday at 8 a.m. PT.  The finalists selected from the east region include, Florida State, LSU and Stetson. Pepperdine, Southern California and UCLA made up the west region selections; while Cal Poly and Hawaii were granted at-large bids.
The seeding is as follows: #1 USC, #2 UCLA, #3 Florida State, #4 Pepperdine, #5 LSU, #6 Cal Poly, #7 Hawai'i and #8 Stetson.
The Championships will take place at Gulf Shores Public Beach and for the fourth year, the double-elimination tournament will be hosted by the City of Gulf Shores, University of Alabama at Birmingham and Orange Beach Sports Commission.
The Championships will be televised by ESPN networks, with ESPNU providing live coverage on Friday, May 3 starting at 7 a.m. PT. Live coverage will continue Saturday, May 4 on ESPN2, starting at 11 p.m. PT and Sunday, May 5 at 7:30 a.m. PT on ESPN2.Â
The championship dual will air on ESPN Sunday, May 5 at 11 a.m. PT. Additionally, live streaming coverage of every court throughout the tournament will be available on ESPN3.
The Waves are one of only two teams that have made the national tournament in every year of it's eight-year span, dating back to 2012 when the Waves won the inaugural AVCA Championships – a feat the team repeated in 2014. This is the fourth year beach volleyball has been a NCAA-sanctioned sport, as it was had been an emerging sport from 2011-2015, and it will be the fourth year of the NCAA Tournament.  The previous four tournaments were hosted by the AVCA. Â
In past tournaments, the Waves have been the #2 seed (2018) and #3 seed (2016, 2017). This season, Pepperdine has gone 20-9 overall with a 15-9 record against nationally ranked opponents. The Waves have gone 4-1 against LSU all-time since 2018, losing the first-ever matchup between the two this season with a 3-2 result in March.
Pepperdine has faced all opponents in the field, with the only exception being #8-seeded Stetson, amassing a 5-7 record against the other seven opponents in 2019.
The double-elimination tournament is the NCAAs 90th National Championship. The field was selected from the 69 NCAA institutions sponsoring the sport of beach volleyball. Three teams were selected form the East Region and three teams were selected from the West Regions. The remaining two teams were selected at-large from the teams across the country. All eight teams were then seeded.Â
For all championship site match times and more information about the championship, go to https://gowav.es/NCAABeachVB19.  Follow @WavesBeachVB for updates and check on PepperdineWaves.com for full results, recaps and more!
