HUNTINGTON BEACH- The fourth-seeded California beach volleyball team defeated No. 5 seed Grand Canyon 3-1 in the first round of the inaugural MPSF Championship on Wednesday in Huntington Beach.
 
The Golden Bears (26-7) move into the winner's bracket and will face No. 1 UCLA tomorrow at 11 a.m., while the Lopes (22-10) take on seventh-seeded Washington in an elimination match at 9:30 a.m.
 
"Our hats are off to Grand Canyon," head coach Meagan Owusu said. "That is the fourth time we've played them, so we expected a battle, and they gave us one."
 
Cal improved to a perfect 4-0 against GCU this season having bested its new conference foe three times in the last 11 days.
 
The Lopes made this contest anything but easy taking three of the first five sets and winning the first dual point with a straight-set victory on court one.
 
The two Bear pairs that won their first sets got the job finished in two to get Cal on the board. Junior Jenna Colligan and senior Ella Driebholz were first with a court-five win to tie the dual and the court-two duo of junior Gia Fisher and graduate student Sierra Caffo led wire-to-wire to put the Bears up 2-1.
 
With GCU winning the first sets at the 3s and 4s, Cal would need to force at least one tiebreaker to stay alive and instead got two massive set-two wins by both pairs.
 
On court three seniors Alexandria Young-Gomez and Ella Sears suffered a tough 23-21 loss in the first but bounced back for a dominant 21-12 win in the second frame. The Bears rode that momentum straight into the third set winning 15-8 to seal the dual.
 
A win over the top-seeded Bruins would put Cal directly into the semifinal scheduled for 3:30 p.m. against the winner of No. 2 Stanford vs. No. 3 USC. A loss would put the Bears right back on the sand at 2 p.m. in an elimination game against the winner of the morning matchup between the Lopes and Huskies.
 
All matches will be streamed live on B1G+.
 
#4 Cal - 3, #5 Grand Canyon - 1
1. Adrianna Ferro/Ines Piret (GCU) def. Emma Donley/Portia Sherman (Cal) 21-14, 21-16
2. Gia Fisher/Sierra Caffo (Cal) def. Becca Drake/Katie Keefe (GCU) 21-16, 21-19
3. Ella Sears/Alexandria Young-Gomez (Cal) def. Jessica Drake/Rhea Kohl (GCU) 21-23, 21-12, 15-8
4. Marilu Pally/Maile Somera (Cal) vs. Karynn Garrow/Sophia Hladyniuk (GCU) 19-21, 21-18, 5-6 (unf.)
5. Jenna Colligan/Ella Dreibholz (Cal) def. Madi Bogle/Mae Manthe (GCU) 21-19, 21-19
Order of finish: 1, 5, 2, 3