UC Santa Barbara pulled off its second upset in as many nights over Chicago teams from the MIVA and Ball State scored a big MIVA win over Ohio State on a Saturday of NCAA men’s Division I-II volleyball when the top four teams and seven overall in the rankings had the day off.
There are three matches Sunday. Sixth-ranked Pepperdine of the MPSF goes to No. 3 UC Irvine of the Big West, while the MIVA shows Quincy at home twice, against Milwaukee Engineering and St. Xavier.
Tenth-ranked UCSB of the Big West (7-3), which knocked off No. 9 Lewis on Friday, did it again on Saturday, this time beating visiting No. 5 Loyola 23-25, 33-31, 25-16, 25-22.
UCSB, which hit .304, was led by Corey Chavers, who had 20 kills, hit .475, and had an ace, two digs and two blocks. Ryan Wilcox had 14 kills, six digs and four blocks. Brandon Hicks and Haotian Xia had six kills each and Hicks had two digs and five blocks.
“This is a great win for our team,” UCSB coach Rick McLaughlin said. “We’ve trained well the past few weeks and have competed well against four top-15 opponents. We look forward to facing a very good (No. 4) BYU team twice next week in Rob Gym. Should be a battle.” Loyola (6-2) got 12 kills from Will Tischler, who hit .346 and had an assist and 12 digs. He had no aces and was one of three Ramblers with six of his team’s service errors. Luke Denton, who who had eight kills but hit .000, had Loyola’s two aces to go with five blocks. Collin Mahan had 11 kills, Kyle Piekarski 10 and Paul Narup also had eight …
No. 13 Ball State (4-4, 1-0) opened MIVA play with a 14-25, 25-20, 25-22, 25-22 victory over visiting No. 12 Ohio State (3-4, 0-1).
Ball State hit .305 and had 10 aces against 15 service errors. Five of those aces came from Parker Swartz, who also had two kills, three digs and three blocks. Matt Szews led with 13 kills and had an ace, five digs and two blocks. Kaleb Jenness added 12 kills, an ace, five digs and a block.
“Every MIVA match is important but the matches in your gym are extremely important,” Ball State coach Joel Walton said. “Even though we didn’t start very well tonight, our guys got something going in game two and I was impressed with how they kept it going through the rest of the match to get us a big win.”
Ohio State had four aces and 20 errors. Jake Hanes led with 18 kills, two of those aces, an assist, seven digs and a block. Martin Lallemand had 11 kills, hit .417 with one error in 24 attacks, seven digs and four blocks, one solo …
No. 8 Stanford of the MPSF (7-1) beat visiting No. 15 Purdue Fort Wayne of the MIVA (4-4) for the second time in as many nights, this time 25-17, 25-21, 25-23.
Stanford hit .367 and had four aces and just six errors. The Cardinal was led by Jaylen Jasper, who had 11 kills. He hit .400 and had an ace, four digs and a block. Jordan Ewert had nine kills, two assists, an ace, six digs and a block. Setter Paul Bischoff had two kills in two attacks, 30 assists, seven digs and four blocks, one solo.
Colton Stone led Fort Wayne with 15 kills. He hit .379 and had one of his team’s four aces against 19 errors, four digs and a block …
No. 9 Lewis of the MIVA (6-3) had to go five to win at No. 11 CSUN of the Big West (5-4) 22-25, 25-23, 25-19, 21-25, 15-12. Lewis, which was coming off two losses, was led by Julian Moses, who had 15 kills and hit .414. He had two of the Flyers’ six aces, five digs and five blocks, two solo. Connor Pallmann had 11 kills, four digs and a block, and Ryan Coenen had nine kills, an ace, an assist, four digs and a three blocks. TJ Murray added seven kills, hitting .462, and seven blocks, two solo. Setter Matt Yoshimoto had 43 assists, three aces, 12 digs and two blocks, one solo.
CSUN’s Ksawery had a career-high 24 kills — eight more than he’d ever had before — an ace, nine digs and three blocks, and Dimitar Kalchev had 19 kills, two assists, four of his team’s nine aces, five digs and a solo block.
“Tonight showed us what we need to work on as the season goes along,” CSUN coach Jeff Campbell said.” Our passing broke down so we need to work on that. For the most part, I thought our serving was pretty good but when it’s that close in set five it comes down to one or two plays. I thought we played well in set one and set four but in sets two and three our setting broke down and our passing broke down. They really affected us in a way that affected our attacking.”
Other ranked teams with Saturday off included No. 6 Pepperdine, No. 7 UCLA, and No. 14 George Mason.
The Big West’s UC San Diego (3-5) swept visiting Grand Canyon of the MPSF (6-4) 25-20, 27-25, 25-19. Wyatt Harrison came up big for the Tritons with 17 kills while hitting .394 to go with two assists, two digs and a block. Berkeley Miesfeld had seven kills and hit .308 and added an assist, two of his team’s four aces, four digs and three blocks. UCSD had just nine serving errors.
“Coming off last night with a great crowd (when UCSD lost to UCLA on Friday) we knew that Saturday’s crowd would be a smaller crowd, so we talked about the fact that we need to self-energize individually and as a team,” UCSD coach Kevin Ring said. “We did that really well tonight, I thought that our bench was great.
“I thought that we served well, we certainly got them in trouble with some solid jump-float, we actually had a couple of guys that are typically jump servers for us and switched to a jump float.
“Anytime you ask someone to change something that they normally do, even though a jump-float serve isn’t maybe the most difficult serve to execute, it’s still a change in the middle of competition.”
Christian Janke led GCU with 15 kills. He hit .423 and had an assist and two digs …
The EIVA’s Penn State (4-2) held off visiting Lindenwood of the MIVA (2-5) 30-28, 25-15, 25-23.
Cal Fisher led with 12 kills and hit .400 for Penn State as the Nittany Lions hit .319 as a team. Fisher had an assist, three of this team’s five aces against 19 errors, and six digs. Matthew McLaren and Henrick Falck Lauten had 11 kills each. McLaren had two assists, six digs and two blocks, while Falck Lauten had seven digs and four blocks, one solo. Jason Donorovich had four kills, an ace and nine blocks, two solo.
Nick Stevenson had eight kills for Lindenwood, which hit .121 …
There was one other match involving an EIVA team as Saint Francis (4-3) beat visiting McKendree of the MIVA (1-3) 23-25, 25-20, 25-21, 25-23. Michael Fisher led SFU with 20 kills, an ace, four digs and four blocks, one solo. Patrick Bryan added 11 kills, four of his team’s six aces, nine digs and a block …
The MIVA’s Quincy lost in four to Benedictine, another Illinois team …
In Conference Carolinas, which has played the most in-league contests, Barton, King and Mount Olive are all 2-0 and Limestone is 1-0.
Barton (5-2) swept Erskine (2-7, 1-2) behind 19 kills from Angelos Mandilaris, who hit .643 as he continues to carry the Bulldogs. He added seven digs and two blocks. His brother, Vasilis, had nine kills, hit .615, and had an assist, all four of his team’s aces, and two digs and three blocks …
King (3-3) beat Belmont Abbey (2-2, 0-1) in four as Sean Kohlhase led with 22 kills, hitting .362. He had an assist, three of his team’s six aces, and seven digs. Joshua Kim had 14 kills, an ace, seven digs and two blocks, one solo. Liam Maxwell had 17 kills and hit .356 for Belmont Abbey to go with three assists, an ace, 14 digs and a block …
Mount Olive (2-4) swept Emmanuel (3-4, 0-3). Jarrod Ferguson led with 10 kills, hitting .500, and he had three of his team’s six aces, three digs and three blocks before 42 fans …
And North Greenville (3-4, 1-1) swept Lees-McRae (1-4, 0-2). Aaron Campbell had 10 kills, an ace, a dig and three blocks for North Greenville.
