The Dominican University men's volleyball team pushed its winning streak to eight, recovering from a two-set deficit to top the visiting MSOE Raiders in five sets (22-25, 22-25, 25-18, 25-18, 15-13) at the Igini Sports Forum on Friday night. The Stars, ranked third in this week's AVCA Division III Men's Coaches Poll, went to five sets for the first time on the season, improving to 8-1 on the year and 3-0 in the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC).
"We don't want to find ourselves in an 0-2 hole," said Dan Pawlikowski, the Stars' head coach following the match, "but it is a great test of our team to see us battle back and earn a win over a very good MSOE team. They played extremely hard and forced us to the brink. It was only through an extraordinary group effort that we were able to pull even after the fourth and finish the fifth on the strength of our block. Very happy to have this win and continue forward with a quick turnaround tomorrow afternoon."
Despite hitting better than .304 over the first two sets with 20 kills on 46 attacks, the Stars found themselves trailing 2-0 largely due to 16 service errors, nine alone in the first set, without managing an ace. The serving game began to change in the third set with the Raiders committing six errors at the serving line with no aces while the Stars finally broke through for a pair of aces in the set and had just four serving miscues.
The serving struggles continued in the fourth set, with the two sides combining for 13 errors, but it was a .417 attack percentage .840 sideout percentage that tipped the set in Dominican's favor.
Ethan Klosak, the Stars' preseason All-American, knocked down five kills on seven swings in the frame while senior middle
Adam Eboli was equally impressive with four kills on five swings.
After the Raiders opened an 8-6 lead in the fifth set, Dominican rattled off five of the next six points with kills by Klosak and Eboli sandwiched between a trio of MSOE attack errors, to open an 11-9 lead. After a quick sideout for the Raiders, Dominican strung together three more points to setup match-point at 14-10. The Raiders managed to fight off match-point thanks to a pair of Stars' errors before a Raider kill pulled MSOE within one, 14-13, and forced Pawlikowski to use his second timeout of the set. Out of the timeout, Eboli and
Jack McGuire combined for a block at the net to round out the win. The block was one of three Dominican blocks in the deciding set and one of 18 for the Stars on the night.
McGuire ran the Stars' offense to a .345 attack percentage for the night, doling out a season-high 50 assists. Klosak, Eboli and
Jake Sidner all totaled double-digit kills while freshman
George Kougan chipped in eight and
Patrick Bradford added five. Klosak finished the night with 16 kills on 32 swings while Eboli went for 11 kills on just 17 attempts. Sidner managed ten in the winning effort, putting down four kills in the third set as the Stars changed the momentum.
Defensively, Eboli rounded out a double-double with a match-high 11 total blocks, one solo and ten block assists. McGuire was just as effective at the net, posting eight total blocks while Klosak and Bradford added four apiece.
For the Raiders, Austyn Bella led the attack with 14 kills while setter Quin Krisik dished out 40 assists and added five kills of his own.
Dominican will not have much recovery time from the five-set contest that took an hour and 50 minutes to complete, returning to the court in the Igini Sports Forum on Saturday for a NACC tilt against the Lakeland University Muskies at 2:00 p.m.
