HONOLULU — For a men's volleyball team that openly admits it has rallied and rebounded from some rather atrocious starts this season, BYU saved the best for last Saturday night in the 2004 NCAA Championships.
Or, better put, its worst for the last.
And yet, the top-ranked Cougars found a way to stave off three separate match points in one of their poorest outings of the season and claim their third national title in six seasons by beating second-ranked Long Beach State 15-30, 30-18, 20-30, 32-30, 19-17.
And for BYU, which finished its championship season with a 29-4 record, Saturday night's five-game thriller before a Stan Sheriff Center crowd of 3,108 on the University of Hawaii campus takes much of the sting from last year's five-game heatbreaker to 2003 champion Lewis University.
The Cougars fought back from two of their worst outings in Games 1 and 3 and found themselves down 10-6 and 12-9 in the fifth and decisive game, mostly the result of their own faults as BYU racked up several kill errors, service errors, setting errors, passing errors and other on-court violations.
The 49ers had three shots at match point, the first time at 14-13 in the 15-point fifth game. The Cougars held off LBS three times and missed at their first shot at match point.
A Jon Alleman block gave BYU another lead at 18-17, and the Cougars erupted in celebration when Long Beach's Scott Touzinsky's kill attempt around the BYU block connected instead with the antennae for the 19-17 game and five-game match.
All that was left for BYU was collecting the victors' spoils — the first-place trophy, the obligatory championship T-shirts and caps and participants' watches.
"It's unbelievable — I can't even talk right now," said BYU setter Carlos Moreno, named to the all-tournament team as well as adding tournament MVP to his AVCA player-of-the-year, Mountain Pacific Sports Federation player-of-the-year and MPSF tournament MVP honors to his collection of awards this season.
Joining Moreno on the all-tournament team were BYU outside hitter Fernando Pessoa; the Long Beach State trio of Touzinsky, setter Tyler Hildebrand and Duncan Budinger; Penn State's Keith Kowal and Lewis' Jeff Soler.
The victory marked the fourth time that BYU had downed Long Beach State (28-7) — including two five-game regular-season victories in California and last week's MPSF championship game in Provo.
Second-year BYU coach Tom Peterson becomes the first to win NCAA titles at two different schools, having guided Penn State to the 1994 championship.
And he had to do plenty of coaching and cajoling the Cougars Saturday night, as the Cougars managed a .252 hitting percentage to LBS's .312 and struggled with serving, receiving and passing for much of the night.
Said BYU assistant coach Grayson DeBose: "I looked up at the scoreboard at one point and thought, 'These numbers don't win you volleyball games.' But this is a team of destiny."
It looked first like a team headed for another NCAA title-match disappointed.
In the opening game, BYU quickly fell behind by 13 points, repeatedly unable to return serve and trailing 19-6 and hitting a minus-.156 to Long Beach's .800. Ending up hitting .435 to BYU's .043, the 49ers put the Cougars out of their first-game misery quickly, 30-15, fittingly enough on a Touzinsky ace.
The 15 points was by far the fewest the Cougars had scored in a 30-point game this season, five fewer than the 20 points in the opener at Pepperdine and an early season home loss to Cal State Northridge.
What the Cougars got in the first game they turned right around gave back to the 49ers in the second game, winning 30-18 and outhitting by a margin of .516 to .286. BYU rebounded behind Pessoa's six kills and another four by middle blocker Michael Burke.
It was the third time this season the Cougars had held an opponent under 20 points.
In the back-and-forth battle, the third game looked much like the first — with about the same results, as LBS hit .519 to BYU's .034 in winning 30-20. For the second time in three games, the Cougars managed fewer than double-digit kills — and again only one more kill than error in a sub-.100 attack.
In the fourth game, the two teams finally managed a closely contested battle, with BYU enjoying a 10-6 lead early and LBS later knotting the score at 12-all and taking its first lead at 17-16 and a two-point lead at 19-17 on a pair of service aces.
The Cougars came back to take a seemingly safe lead at 27-24 on a Pessoa kill, but the 49ers soon tied it at 28-28 before Moreno tipped a couple of kills and Alleman scored the game-winner on a solo block for the 32-30 score.
Joe Hillman led BYU with 14 kills, with Peossa and Alleman adding 13. Burke was in on seven blocks, with BYU totalling 14.5 to LBS' 10.5.
Touzinky led the 49ers with 17 blocks, with Jeff Wootton adding 16.
E-mail: taylor@desnews.com