Johnson and Loiola Have Hot Day on Sand : Volleyball: No. 3-seeded team knocks off No. 1 Kiraly and Ayakatubby twice to win title.

Adam Johnson and Jose Loiola were invincible Sunday at the $250,000 Miller Lite Championships in Hermosa Beach. The No. 3-seeded team beat the No. 1-seeded team of Karch Kiraly and Scott Ayakatubby twice to win the $100,000 first-place prize.

“We just ran into a steamroller,” Kiraly said. “There was not much we could do to stop them today.”

In an early morning winners’ bracket final, Johnson and Loiola defeated Kiraly and Ayakatubby, 15-12, then in the championship match that afternoon, Loiola and Johnson dominated them again for a 15-5 victory.

Kiraly and Ayakatubby earned a spot in the championship match by defeating No. 5 Brian Lewis and Bill Boullianne, 15-5, in the contenders’ bracket final. It was amazing how a team could be so dominant and then so helpless about half an hour later.

But with Loiola, a dynamic Brazilian, at the net and Johnson, a former USC All-American, covering the backcourt, Kiraly and Ayakatubby couldn’t get anything going in the final.

They were down, 8-0, before Ayakatubby served and Kiraly blocked one of Johnson’s hard-hit shots for their first point. Kiraly, who rarely shows emotion on the court, clinched his fists and yelled.

But it was hardly the beginning of a comeback or even a rally. Loiola and Johnson had match point before Kiraly and Ayakatubby scored again. Loiola, a 25-year-old in only his third season on the pro beach tour, rejected shot after shot with his powerful blocks. He had six in the final, five of them for points.

“He was everywhere,” Ayakatubby said. “Everywhere I hit it, he was there. I was trying to go around him, through him, over him. . . . Nothing worked. It was like he had ESP.”

The victory marks the fourth tournament title for Johnson and Loiola as a team. Two weeks ago, Johnson and Loiola won the Manhattan Beach Open and Sunday’s victory makes them only the fourth team in the history of the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals to win both South Bay events in the same year.

Both are regarded as major tournaments on the 24-stop AVP tour. Manhattan Beach is considered the Wimbledon of beach volleyball and Hermosa Beach is the regular-season ending event.