Saturday wasn’t the busiest domestic volleyball day, but it’s worth noting that Penn State has now won nine matches in a row, we had tremendous response to the column on this site by Lipscomb coach Brandon Rosenthal, and San Diego played Holy Names. I had to look up Holy Names and will tell you about it in a bit.
Nittany Lions on a roll
Penn State is now 10-2 and 5-0 in the EIVA after sweeping Princeton. The Nittany Lions are home next Friday and Saturday against Charleston and George Mason and even though there’s a long way to go can pretty much put themselves in an untouchable lead atop the league with a couple of victories. Here’s the Penn State account of Saturday’s win.
Harvard and Sacred Heart are in second at 3-1. This weekend Sacred Heart took both its matches against Charleston, while Harvard did the same against Mason.
Next Friday and Saturday, Sacred Heart plays NJIT and then Princeton, while Harvard gets them in the opposite order.
MIVA
Loyola, Ohio State and Quincy were winners on Saturday. Here is the MIVA recap of all three matches.
Ball State is atop the league at 5-0 after its big victories earlier in the week. Ohio State is 7-1, followed by Loyola (4-2) and Lewis (5-3).
The MIVA has a full slate of matches Thursday, Friday and Saturday, but none pitting any of the top three teams.
Holy Names is in Oakland
And its nickname is the Hawks. However, in men’s volleyball, Holy Names (enrollment 1,331) is now 0-12 after losing to badly to UC San Diego. For that matter, just one time, two matches ago when the Hawks lost to Hope International in five, have the Hawks won a set all season.
The good news for UC San Diego is the Tritons snapped an eight-match losing streak to improve to 4-13.
In the only other MPSF match on Saturday, BYU swept Cal Baptist. Here is the BYU account.
There is one match on tap today, UCLA at Stanford, and it’s on the Pac-12 Network at 11 a.m. Pacific. The announcers are the inimitable Kevin Barnett and former Stanford women’s and men’s coach Don Shaw, whose son James is the setter for the Cardinal.
More important, however, is that we will be doing a video chat with Don Shaw on Monday.
On the beach
There’s stuff going on in places like Iran, South Africa, Rio, and you can keep up by going to FIVB.com/en
