The Dominican University men's volleyball team closed out the 2019 regular season on Saturday afternoon, sweeping the Concordia University Chicago Cougars (25-8, 25-23, 25-17) to improve to 18-10 on the season and 13-3 in the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC).
 
Dominican now prepares for the NACC Tournament, sitting idle during Tuesday's quarterfinal round as the tournament's #2 seed behind the MSOE Raiders.  The Stars await the winner of the Aurora University-Concordia University Wisconsin in the semifinals at MSOE on Friday at 5:00 p.m.
 
"We are really happy to finish the conference season strong with back-to-back road sweeps over two quality opponents," said Dan Pawlikowski, the Stars' head men's volleyball coach, following Saturday's regular season finale. "It was great to see a number of different players step up and make solid contributions. Our focus is to continue improving and goes for this next week as well. We are happy to earn a first round bye, but we know what is on the line this upcoming weekend—a trip to the national tournament. Also, I would be remiss to not congratulate Coach Buehring, his staff and team at Benedictine on winning the NACC regular season."
 
The Stars hit .410 in Saturday's winning effort—their fifth match above .400 on the season.  Dominican needed just 30 kills, getting a team-high eight from senior Nidhin Thomas.  Sophomore setter Jack McGuire dished out 30 assists with ten different players logging at least one kill for the Stars.
 
Defensively, Dominican limited the Cougars to just a .025 attack percentage, forcing 22 errors while allowing just 24 kills.  At the net, the Stars posted ten total blocks, including four for Patrick Bradford and three apiece for Thomas and Adam Eboli.  In the back row, the Stars collected 31 digs, led by Adrian Cebula's team-high eight.